The Red Knight

Chapter Twelve

Hector Lachlan

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The Siege of Lissen Carak – Day Six

The woods around us are silent. Do monsters mourn?

Day before yesterday, the captain won a great victory over the Enemy. He took most of the company across the Cohoctorn to the south, where Master Gelfred had located a convoy coming to us. It was hard hit, but the captain’s sortie took the enemy in the rear, and destroyed them. The captain thinks we killed upwards of five hundred of the enemy, including four great monsters, to whit, three great Stone Trolls and a Behemoth.

The men say the captain killed the Behemoth himself, and that it was the greatest feat of arms they had ever seen.

Yesterday, the company stood to all day, waiting for attacks that never came. Men slept at their posts, fully armed.

Many of the farmers and as many nuns say this will be the end of the siege – that the enemy will slink away. The Abbess has called a great council of all the officers.

The Abbess had a table brought in, and the captain thought it might be the longest he’d ever seen – it filled the Great Hall from hearth to dais, space for thirty men to sit at table together.

But there were not thirty men at the table.

There were just six. And the Abbess.

The six were the captain himself, sitting in one chair with his feet on another, and Ser Jehannes, sitting upright in a third; Master Gerald Random, who by virtue of saving almost half his convoy had suddenly become the representative of all the merchants, taking another pair of chairs, and Ser Milus, as the commander of the Bridge Castle, sat with his head propped on his hands. Master Gelfred sat separately from the other men, a self-imposed social distance. And the priest, Father Henry, sat with a stylus and wax tablets, prepared to copy their decisions.

The Abbess sat to the captain’s right, flanked by two sisters, who stood. The captain understood that the two silent figures were her Chancellor and Mistress of Novices, the two most powerful offices in the convent. Sister Miram and Sister Ann.

When all the men had settled the Abbess cleared her throat. ‘Captain?’ she asked.

He took his booted feet off a chair and sat up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We are now, at long last, under siege. Our Enemy has finally realised how few we are, and has sealed the roads.’ He shrugged. ‘Frankly, this is a harsher defeat than any we have suffered in the field. He should have thought, after yesterday’s incredible stroke of luck-’

‘The work of God!’ Master Random said.

‘The Enemy should have assumed,’ the captain went on, ‘we had a big garrison and a lot of potent phantasm to pull off such a coup. Instead, he’s used the night to push in all my outposts. I lost three good men last night, gentlemen and ladies.’ He looked around. The cunningly hidden heavy arbalest in the dead ground hadn’t been cunning enough, and now Guillaume Longsword, one of his officers, as well as his page and archer were dead, and Young Will, as his squire was known, was weeping his guts out in the infirmary. ‘More men than we lost in yesterday’s fight,’ he went on.

The other mercenaries nodded.

‘On a more positive note, Master Random brought us a dozen men-at-arms and sixty archers.’ Of very variable quality, and every one of them ran yesterday, at one point or another. Every one but one, he remembered sourly. Ser Gawin had not yet condescended to open an eye.

‘My guildsmen are not mere archers,’ Master Random said.

The captain sat back, assessing the man. ‘I know they are not,’ he said. ‘But for the duration of the siege, Master, we must treat them as soldiers.’

Random nodded. ‘I, too, can swing a sword.’

The captain had noticed that he was wearing one, and reports had it that the merchant had acquitted himself well.

‘So,’ he went on, ‘we have forty men-at-arms well enough to wear harness, and our squires; call it sixty knights. We have almost triple that in archers, thanks to the better farmers and the guildsmen.’ He looked around. ‘Our Enemy has at least five thousand, boglins, irks, allies and men taken together.’

‘Good Christ!’ Ser Milus sat up.

Ser Jehannes looked as if he’d eaten something foul.

Master Gelfred nodded when the captain looked at him. ‘Can’t be less, given what I saw this morning,’ he said. ‘The Enemy can cover every road and every path at the same time, and they rotate their forces every few hours.’ He shrugged. ‘You can watch the boglins digging trenches out beyond the range of our trebuchets. It’s like watching termites. There are-’ he shrugged, ‘a great many termites.’

The captain looked around. ‘In addition, we have another hundred merchants and merchants’ folk, and four hundred women and children.’ He smiled. ‘In the East, I’d be sending them out right now, to fill the besieger’s lines with useless mouths.’ He looked around. ‘Here, they’d literally fill the enemy’s bellies, instead.’ No one appreciated his humour.

‘You can’t be serious!’ said the Abbess.

‘I am not. I won’t drive them out to die. But the merchants and their people must be put to work, and I’d like to assign a dozen archers and two men-at-arms to training them. If we cannot be rid of these useless mouths, we must make them useful. We have about forty days’ food for a thousand mouths. Double that at half rations’

‘And we have all that grain!’ the Abbess said.

‘Grain for two hundred and eighty days,’ he said.

‘The king will be here long before then,’ the Abbess said firmly.

‘Good day to you,’ said a voice from the door, and Harmodius, the Magus, came in. He smiled around, a little unsure of his welcome. ‘I received your invitation, but I was in the midst of a dissection. You, my lords, have a plentiful supply of candidates for dissection.’ He smiled. ‘I have learned some exciting things.’

They all stared at him as if he was a leper newly arrived at a feast. He pulled out a chair and sat.

‘There were rats in the grain, by the way,’ Harmodius said. ‘I’ve disposed of them. Do you know,’ he asked, his eyes on the Abbess, ‘who the captain of the Enemy is?’

She flinched.

‘You do, I see. Hmm.’ The old Magus didn’t look nearly so old, today. He looked closer to forty than seventy. ‘I remember you, of course, my lady.’

The Abbess trembled – just for a moment – and then forced herself to look at the Magus. The captain saw the effort it took.

‘And I you,’ the Abbess said.

‘Well, three cheers for the air of dangerous mystery,’ the captain said. ‘I for one am delighted you both know each other.’

The Magus looked at him. ‘This from you?’ He leaned forward. ‘I know who you are too, lad.’

Every head in the room snapped to look – first at the captain, and then at the Magus.

‘Do you really?’ asked the Abbess, and she clutched at the rosary around her neck. ‘Really?’

Harmodius was enjoying his moment of drama, the captain could see it. He wished he knew who the old charlatan was. As it was, he fingered his rondel dagger.

‘If you reveal me, I swear before the altar of your God I will cut you down right here,’ the captain hissed.

Harmodius laughed, and rocked his chair back. ‘You, and all the rest of you together couldn’t muss my hair,’ he said. He raised his hand.

The mercenaries were all on their feet, weapons in hand.

But then he shook his head. ‘Gentlemen!’ he said. He raised his hands. ‘I beg your pardon, Captain. Truly. I like a little surprise. I thought, perhaps – but please, never mind me, a harmless old man.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the captain, across his bare blade.

The Abbess shook her head. ‘He is Harmodius di Silva, the King’s Magus. He broke the enemy at Chevin. He bound the former King’s Magus, when he betrayed us.’

‘Your lover,’ Harmodius muttered. ‘Well – one of your lovers.’

‘You were a foolish young man then, and you still are in your heart.’ The Abbess settled primly back into her seat.

‘My lady, if I am, it is because he has glamoured me for years,’ Harmodius said. ‘I was not as victorious as I had thought. And he is still with us.’ Harmodius looked around the table. ‘The captain of the Enemy, my lords, is the former King’s Magus. The most powerful of my order to arise in twenty generations.’ He shrugged. ‘Or so I suspect, and my guesswork is based on observation.’

‘You are too modest,’ the Abbess said bitterly.

‘I tricked him, as you well know,’ Harmodius said. ‘I could never have even hoped to match him phantasm for phantasm. And less so now, when he has sold himself to the Wild and I have languished in a prison of his making for a decade, at least.’

The soldiers and the merchant watched these exchanges – back and forth – like spectators at a joust. Even the captain, whose precious anonymity had teetered at the edge of extinction, was lost.

‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘Our Enemy is really a man?’

‘Not any more,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he is an entity called Thorn. His powers are to mine as mine are to the lady Abbess’.’

The priest at the end of the table had stopped writing. Now he looked at them all in horror. The captain almost felt sorry for the man. His aversion to those who possessed the power – Hermetic or natural – was like most men’s aversion to coming in contact with disease.

The captain leaned forward. ‘Can we stop the flood of reminiscence and revelation and try to dwell on the siege?’ he asked.

‘He underestimated you, and you hurt him, and that’s over now,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now he’ll hurt us, in turn.’

‘Thanks for that,’ the captain said.

‘Now that he’s closed off our access to the outside world, there will be no more surprise sorties, no more victories.’ The Magus sat back. ‘Nor can you imagine that I can face him, because I can’t. Although my presence here will make him hungrier to take this place.’

‘We can still make sorties with every prospect of success,’ the captain insisted. ‘With the addition of Messire Random’s convoy, we have more men-at-arms and more archers than we had at the start.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt it. I mean no disrespect – you have done nobly. But the trick with the falcons and the dogs won’t work again, and his intellect – pardon me, Captain – is staggering. He’ll have traitors inside the walls and he’ll be working to get traitors within the ranks of your companies and your merchants. He also has the power to reach out to any person among us who has power. How strong is your will, my lady?’ he asked.

‘Never very strong,’ she answered levelly, ‘but where he is concerned, it is like adamantine.’

Harmodius smiled. ‘I imagine that’s true, my lady,’ he admitted.

‘Even if he has us locked in a box,’ the captain insisted, ‘even if he threw his allies at the walls every day-’ He shrugged. ‘We can last.’

‘He won’t,’ Harmodius said. He leaned forward, and it was as if he deflated, the change was so sudden. ‘What he will do is seek to undermine us, because that is how he works. He will use craft and misdirection – he prefers to use a traitor to open the gate, because that excuses his own betrayal. And because he likes to imagine his intellect is superior to any other.’

The captain managed a smile. ‘My old sword master used to say that a good swordsman likes not just to win, but to do it his own way,’ he said.

‘Very true,’ the Magus said. ‘Hubristical, but true.’

The captain nodded. ‘Hubris – a common failing in your profession too, surely?’

Harmodius smiled bitterly.

The captain leaned forward. ‘I have two questions, and here you are to answer them,’ he said. ‘Can he attack the walls directly? With a phantasm?’

‘Never,’ the Abbess said. ‘These walls have half a millennia of prayer and phantasm in them, and no power on earth-’

‘Yes,’ Harmodius said. He shrugged at the Abbess. ‘He is not Richard Plangere, gentleman Magus, my lady, just dressed up in feathers and gone a bit bad. He is Thorn. He is a Power of the Wild. If he puts himself to it, he can assault the very walls of this ancient fortress with his powers, and he will, in time, break them.’ He turned to the captain. ‘But in my estimation, and I might be horribly wrong, he won’t take that option unless all else fails, because the cost would be staggering.’

The captain nodded. ‘Not very different from the answer I expected. Second question: you are the King’s Magus. Do you have the power to distract him? Or to defeat him?’

Harmodius nodded. ‘I can distract him, I think. Once at little risk to myself, and once at great risk to myself.’ He laughed. ‘I can feel him all around us, my lords. He seeks to know our minds and, so far, the power in this convent and in the fortress walls has stopped him. He knows I am here, but as yet I do not think he knows who I am.’ Harmodius shook his head and seemed, once again, to shrink. ‘Yet until a few days ago, I didn’t really know who I was myself. By God, the extent to which he cozened me.’ The captain sat back, already thinking hard. ‘Can you imagine any circumstance under which he would abandon the siege?’ he asked. ‘If the king comes, will he simply retire?’

Harmodius looked at all of them for a long time. ‘You really have no idea what you are dealing with, here,’ he said. ‘Do you seriously think the king will reach us?’ he asked.

The captain made a face. ‘You are the all-knowing Magus, and I’m just the young pup commanding the mercenaries, but it seems to me-’

‘Spare us your false humility,’ Harmodius snapped.

‘Spare us your overweening arrogance, then! It seems to me this is not a carefully wrought plan, and with due respect, Magus, this Thorn is not as staggeringly intelligent as you seem to think.’ The captain looked around.

Ser Milus nodded. ‘I agree. He makes beginner mistakes. He knows nothing of war.’ He shrugged. ‘At least, not of the war of men.’

Harmodius started to react and then pulled on his ample beard. There was a heavy silence. The men around the table realised they were prepared for the Magus to react.

But he shook his head. ‘That is – a very interesting point. And quite possibly a valid one.’

Father Henry came out of the Great Hall with his shoulders slumped, and Mag watched him enter the chapel and sit on a carved chair near the door, his head in his hands.

He wasn’t a bad priest – he had heard her confession and had passed her to God with an endurable penance. She wanted to like him for it, but there was something in his eyes she couldn’t like – a quality to his moist hand on her brow that unsettled her.

She was considering all these things when the archers came by. There were two of them, younger archers she didn’t know well. The taller one had bright red hair and a hollow smile. They had their brigantines off and were looking around the courtyard.

They looked like trouble.

The tall one with a beard like a Judas goat spotted Lis the laundress, but she didn’t truck with men his age, and she turned her back so his attention passed to Amie, the Carters’ eldest – a blonde girl with more chest than wit, as her mother herself had said, while her younger sister Kitty had all the wit as well as curly dark hair and slanted eyes.

The archers headed for the two girls who sat on stools by the convent kitchen, grinding barley for bread in hand mills. It was boring, exacting work that the nuns thought perfect for attractive young women.

They already had a court of admirers, and the young men – farmers’ sons and apprentices – were, naturally enough, doing the work. This was, Mag thought, probably not a common problem among the nuns, but if they didn’t wise up to it soon they were going to spoil the Carter girls and the Lanthorns and every other single woman in the fortress who wasn’t a nun. And perhaps a few nuns too, Mag thought to herself.

Mag had started to get to know some of the senior nuns-

She never heard what the archer said, but every one of the farm boys and apprentices was on his feet in a heartbeat.

The archers laughed and sat, and began using tow and ash to polish their helmets and elbow cops to the uniform dark gleam that seemed to mark the men of the company.

Mag walked closer. She saw trouble coming, and while the archers didn’t seem to be provoking it, they were.

‘Any clod can follow a plough,’ Judas Beard said. He smiled. ‘I did, once.’

‘Who are you, then?’ said an apprentice.

‘I’m a soldier,’ Judas Beard said. Just from his intonation, Mag, who had known some boys, knew that every word he said was aimed at the Carter girls.

Amie looked up from her mill. She’d taken the pestle back from the Smith boy because Mag was there and might tell. ‘Did you – fight? Yesterday?’

‘I killed a dozen boglins,’ Judas Beard said. He laughed. ‘It’s easy, if you know how.’

‘If you know how,’ said the other archer, who until now had been silent. He wasn’t doing much polishing.

‘Then it ain’t any different from any other trade,’ said a shoemaker’s apprentice.

‘Except that I’ll die rich while you’re still be up to your neck in your master’s piss,’ Judas Beard said.

Kitty put her hands on her hips. ‘Mind your language,’ she said.

The archers exchanged a glance. ‘Anything for a pretty lady,’ the quiet one said with a smile. He got up and bowed, a courtly bow, better than any of the farm boys, Mag knew. ‘I’m sure you hear too much of that already, eh, lass?’

‘Don’t you lass me!’ Kitty said.

Amie was smiling at the red-bearded archer.

Mag didn’t know what she felt was wrong here – the tone of it? The anger of the local boys seemed to fuel the archers.

‘If’n you put some tallow on that flax, it’d hold the grit better,’ said another boy – really, a young man. ‘Less you’re just doing it for show.’ The lad grinned. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, and no more a local than the archers.

Silent gave him a mocking look. ‘If I need a yokel to tell me how to polish my armour, I’ll ask,’ he said.

The big lad grinned again. ‘Yokel yourself, farm boy. I’m from Harndon, and I can smell the shit on your shoes from here.’

Kitty giggled.

It was the wrong sound – feminine derision at a critical moment – and Silent turned on her. ‘Shut up, slut.’

And suddenly everything changed, like cream turning to butter in the churn.

Kitty turned red, but she put a hand on the nearest farm boy. ‘No need to do ought,’ she said. ‘No need to defend me.’

Mag was proud of the girl.

But Judas Beard stood up and dusted his lap of tufts of tow. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Be reasonable.’ He smiled. ‘Learn to spread your legs like she does, when there’s a man about.’

Every farm boy was back on his feet, and both archers suddenly had knives – long knives. They took up practised, professional stances. ‘Anyone here got balls?’ Judas Beard said. ‘Heh. You’re just sheep who pay us to guard you. And if I feel like fucking one of your ewes, I will.’

The big Harndon boy stepped out of the knot of locals. ‘I’ll take you both,’ he said. ‘And I’ll see to it you are taken to law.’ He spat on his hands, apparently in no hurry – but as he spat on his left hand, his left leg shot out. He was in close with Silent, his left knee behind the archer’s knee, and suddenly the knife hand was rotating and the knife wielder was face down in the dust, his knife hand behind his back.

‘Christ!’ he screamed.

The Harndon boy had his knee in the archer’s back. He turned to the other. ‘Drop your whittle or I’ll shatter his shoulder. And I’ll still come and break your skull.’

Judas Beard growled, and a heavy staff hit him in the back of the head – hit him so hard that he dropped like a sack of rocks.

Mag was all but nose-to-nose with the mercenaries’ commander, who had appeared – apparently out of thin air – and hit the red-haired archer with his staff of office. She squeaked.

He was standing over the big Harndonner and the smaller archer, who was still locked face down in the bigger boy’s grip. ‘Let him go,’ said the captain quietly. ‘I’ll see he’s punished, but I need his bow arm working.’

The big youth looked up and nodded, and in one fluid motion he rose to his feet and let the archer drop to the cobbled pavement. ‘I could have taken your other man,’ he said.

‘I’m know you could,’ the captain said. ‘You’re a wagoner, aren’t you?’

‘Daniel Favor, of Harndon. My pater is Dick Favor, and he has ten carts on the roads.’ He nodded.

‘How old are you, Daniel?’ the captain asked, as he leaned down and seized Silent’s ear.

‘Fifteen,’ the Harndonner said.

The captain nodded. ‘Can you pull a bow, lad?’

The big youth grinned. ‘And fight with a sword. But a bow – aye. Any kind, any weight.’

‘Ever thought about the life of a soldier?’ the captain asked.

Daniel nodded solemnly.

‘Why don’t you come along and see this miscreant punished,’ the captain said. ‘There won’t be any carting for some weeks, if I’m any judge, and a boy who can pull a bow can help save his friends. Save some fair maidens, too,’ the captain said, with a pretty bow to the two girls and then to Mag.

Will Carter stepped forward. ‘I can pull a bow too, Captain,’ he said. His voice trembled.

The captain smiled. ‘Can you, now?’ he asked. He looked at Mag. ‘A word with you, goodwife?’

She nodded. The captain took her aside, with the silent archer stumbling after as he kept his grip on the archer’s ear.

‘How bad was this?’ he asked.

She met his eyes. They were very handsome eyes. He was younger than he seemed at a distance. His linens were terrible – the collar of his shirt was ruined and threadbare, and his cuffs were brown-black with grime and a long linen thread dangled from his arming cote. ‘Bad,’ she said. She found she was shaken, and her knees were weak. His eyes were not normal eyes.

‘War does not make boys nice,’ he said, giving his man’s ear a shake.

‘But you’re going to teach it to these young ’uns, anyway,’ she said, while thinking what’s got into you, girl? ‘My lord,’ she added hastily.

He considered what she said. The archer tried to move, and the captain twisted his ear viciously. ‘I take your point, but the alternative is being eaten alive by the Wild,’ he said. He said it ruefully, as if he understood her point all too well.

‘What will happen to him?’ she said.

‘Sym?’ the captain said, turning the silent archer by means of his ear so that he cried out. ‘Sym will have forty lashes on his back – ten a day at two-day intervals, giving him something to look forward to. Unless my marshal thinks it is worth making an example of him.’

Sym cried out.

‘In which case, we’ll tie him to a wagon wheel and cut open his back-’ the captain went on, and Sym whimpered.

Mag swayed.

The captain grinned at her. ‘It may sound awful, but it is better than rape, and once it starts it will not stop. Sorry – I am too blunt.’ He looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You are the seamstress – yes?’ he asked.

She made a curtsy. ‘I am, my lord.’

‘Could you be kind enough to make the time to visit me, Mistress? I need . . . everything.’ He smiled.

She nodded. ‘So I can see,’ she said. Business straightened her back. ‘Shirts? Braes? Caps?’

‘Three of each?’ he asked. He sounded wistful.

‘I’ll wait on you this afternoon, my lord,’ she said with a quick bend of her knee.

‘Well, then,’ he said, towing his archer away by the ear. He walked back to the locals – boys were competing to comfort the Carter girls. Curiously, the Harndon boy was standing uncertainly by, taking no part. Mag flashed him a smile and went about her business.

Lissen Carak – Bad Tom

Tom Lachlan was sitting at his table in the garrison tower. It had become his office – his and Bent’s, because Bent was becoming his right hand.

He looked over his cards, and his ears picked up the unmistakable sound of spurred boots on the stairs.

He was on his feet, cards in a bag, and looking out an arrow slit at a party of boglins digging in the sun before the captain crested the stairs.

Low Sym was all but thrown across the table. He gave a long squeal as the captain released his hold on the man’s ear.

Tom sighed. ‘What’s the useless fuck done now?’ Low Sym was one of the company’s leading lights – in crime. ‘

There were a dozen boys coming up the steps behind the captain.

The captain indicated them with a shift of his eyes. ‘New recruits. Archers.’

Tom nodded. They were likely boys – he’d been eyeing them himself – yeomen’s sons, all big, well-fed lads with good shoulders and muscles. At their head was a boy who looked as if he might, in time, be as tall as Tom himself.

Tom nodded again, and as he rounded the table to greet the recruits he slammed his fist into Low Sym’s head. ‘Don’t move,’ he said.

‘I’ll be in my Commandery,’ the captain said.

Tom bowed, and turned to the boys. ‘Who here can shoot a bow?’ he asked.

‘There’s one other,’ the captain said. ‘Red Beve is lying in the courtyard with a busted noggin. Captain’s court tomorrow for both. Nice and public, Tom.’

Captain’s court was official – not a casual ten lashes and no questions asked situation, but for a crime for which the captain might have a man broken, or executed.

The captain nodded at the boys. ‘Tell the truth and do your best. We don’t take everyone, and your parents have to agree,’ he said.

Tom all but choked on laughter, but the Red Knight was good at this – he was a fine recruiter, while Tom had never been able to recruit anyone for anything unless he had a club in one hand and a whip in the other. We don’t take everyone. He allowed a laugh to escape his gut.

‘Let’s go down to the archery butts and see what you boys are made of,’ he said in what he thought was his kindliest voice. Then he leaned down to Sym. ‘Best lie still, laddy. Captain means to have your guts on a stick.’

Then he followed the boys down the steps to the courtyard.

The captain leaned on the railing of the hoardings that had been assembled outside his Commandery – in effect, giving him a covered and armoured porch that jutted from the walls four hundred feet above the plain. He was watching a party of men – captives? They had to be captives – under the direction of something horrible. They were digging trenches.

As far as his eyes could see, men and monsters were digging trenches. It was a maze – a pattern that he suspected was deliberate, and the scope of it was inhuman and both grotesque and awe-inspiring. The trenches were not in concentric rings, like those a professional soldier would have built – they clung to the ground, marking the edges of every contour like a tight fitting kirtle on a curvaceous woman.

Someone had planned it, and now drove it to execution. In one day.

He wanted Amicia. He wanted to talk to her, but he was too tired and the fortress was too full to find her. But he knew another way – if she was on her bridge. All it required was that he open his door a little. He reached to-

Enter the room. He waved at his tutor, Prudentia, and walked to the iron-bound door.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

She’d been telling him not to do things his entire life and, mostly, he ignored her.

‘You can’t trust her,’ Prudentia said. ‘And Thorn is right outside that door. He waiting for you.’

‘He has to sleep sometime.’

‘Stop!’

He put his whole weight against the door – his whole dream weight – and turned the handle until the tumbler clicked-

And the door slammed back against its hinges and a solid green fog roared into his chamber, enough power to light a city – ten cities-

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn grinned as he felt the dark sun – felt him surface to the world of power – and he sent all his power along the contact lines to bind him. No more hesitation. Men of power always tried a direct challenge. Thorn was ready.

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess felt the rising tide of Wild power and stopped – she was feeding bits of chicken to her bird, and the plate of raw chicken fell to the marble floor. There couldn’t be this much power in her fortress – she reached out and felt him-

North of Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn felt her golden brilliance and he paused, licking at it to taste her, amazed at her potency. Delighted, saddened, angered, guilt-ridden-

Utterly distracted.

The Memory Palace – The Red Knight

He lay on the floor, and Prudentia was trying to reach him, her marble hand inches from his own – her hand and the black and white parquetry tiles were the only things he could see in the roiling, choking cloud of green, the green of trees in high summer. He was pinned to the floor – he could see the shape of the cage closing over him, a phantasm so potent that he could only breathe his wonder as it crushed him – it hesitated. He strained, but it was too powerful, even as it seemed to lose its focus, and he pushed against it his mind screaming ‘Fool, fool, fool-’

The door slammed shut leaving him lying crumpled in the corner of his armoured balcony.

The old Magus stood over him, his staff still glowing, and wisps of fae-fire played along its length. ‘Well, well,’ the old man said. ‘That would be your mother in you, I suspect.’

The captain tried to get to his feet and found himself boneless and almost unable to move his arms. ‘You have the advantage of me,’ he said softly.

The old Magus offered him a hand. ‘So I do. I am Harmodius, Royal Magus, and you are Lord Gabriel Moderatus Murien – Anna’s son.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The Viscount Murien. Don’t try and deny it, you little imp. Your mother thinks you’re dead, but I knew who you were the moment I saw you.’ He got the captain to his feet, and led him across the room to a chair.

Jacques came in with a cocked and loaded arbalest. It was smoothly done – Harmodius had no chance to react.

‘Say the word, my lord, and he’s dead,’ Jacques said.

‘You heard,’ the captain said. He felt as if he had the worst hangover of his life.

‘I heard,’ Jacques said. The bolt-head on the trough of the crossbow didn’t waver.

The captain took in a shaky breath. ‘Why shouldn’t I have you killed?’ he asked the Magus.

‘Is your petty secret worth the lives of everyone in the castle?’ the Magus asked. ‘None of you will live through this without me. Even with me the odds are long. In the name of the Trinity, boy, you just felt his power.’

The captain wished he could think. The Magus’ use of his name – Gabriel – had hit him as hard as the green cage had. He didn’t even allow himself to think the name Gabriel. ‘I have killed, and allowed men to die, to protect my secret,’ he said.

‘Time to stop doing that, then,’ said the Magus.

Jacques didn’t move, and his voice was calm. ‘Why don’t you just shut up about it?’ He shrugged, but the shrug never reached the crossbow bolt’s tip. ‘You being the mighty King’s Magus, and all. You stop talking about some dead boy’s name, and we can all go on together?’

‘Three in a secret,’ the captain muttered.

The Magus pursed his lips. ‘I’ll give my word not to disclose what I know – if you give me yours to talk to me about it. When and if this is over.’

The captain felt as if the floor had dropped from under his feet, and all he wanted to do was jump into the hole and hide. ‘Fine,’ he said. He remembered that Gawin Murien was lying in the hospital, almost exactly over his head. Four in a secret, and one my enemy, he thought. My lovely brother.

‘I so swear, by my power,’ the Magus said.

The captain forced himself to raise his head. ‘At ease, Jacques,’ he said. ‘He’s just sworn an oath that binds – if he breaks it, his own power will be crippled.’ He turned back to the Magus. ‘You saved my life,’ he said.

‘Ah – some shred of courtesy survives in you. Yes, boy, I saved you from a grisly death – he wanted your power for his own.’ The horrible old man grinned. ‘He was going to eat your soul.’

The captain nodded. ‘I feel as if he did. Or perhaps he didn’t like the taste?’ he tried to grin and gave it up. ‘A cup of water, Jacques.’

Jacques backed up a step, took the bolt from the action and used the goat’s foot at his belt to slowly unlever the string. ‘Loons,’ he muttered, as he left the room.

When he was gone, the Magus leaned forward. ‘How powerful are you, boy? Your mother never said a word.’

The captain’s heart beat faster at the word mother, and flashed on his beautiful mother, drunk and violent and hitting him-

‘Don’t mention my mother again.’ He sounded childish, even to himself.

Harmodius hooked a stool over with his staff and sat. ‘All right, boy, sod your mother. She was never any friend of mine. How powerful are you?’

The captain sat back, trying to recover his – his sense of himself. His poise. His captainness.

‘I have a good deal of raw power, and I had a good tutor until-’ He paused.

‘Until you ran away and faked your death,’ the Magus concluded. ‘Which of course you did with a phantasm. Of course you did.’ He shook his head.

‘I didn’t mean to fake it,’ the captain said.

The Magus smiled. ‘I was young and angry and hurt once, too, lad,’ he said. ‘Despite appearances. Never mind – cold comfort. I glimpsed your memory palace – magnificent. The entity within it – who is she?’

‘My tutor,’ the captain said.

There was a long pause. Harmodius cleared his throat. ‘You- ?’

The captain shrugged. ‘No I didn’t kill her. She was dying – my mother and my brothers, they . . . never mind. I saved what I could.’

The Magus narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s a human woman bound to a statue in a memory palace?’ he asked. ‘Inside your head.’

The captain sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Heresy, thaumaturgy, necromancy, gross impiety, and perhaps kidnapping too,’ Harmodius said. ‘I don’t know whether to arrest you or ask how you did it.’

‘She helped me. She still does,’ the captain said.

‘How many of the hundred workings do you know?’ the Magus asked.

‘The hundred workings, of which there are at least a hundred and forty-four, and perhaps as many as four hundred?’ the captain asked.

Jacques came in with a tray – apple cider, water, wine.

‘No one comes in,’ the captain said.

Jacques made a face that suggested that he was no fool – but perhaps his master was – and left.

The Magus fingered his beard. ‘Hmmm,’ he said noncommittally.

‘I can work more than a hundred and fifty of them,’ the captain said. He shrugged.

‘It was a splendid memory machine,’ the Magus replied. ‘Why – if I may ask – aren’t you the shining light of Hermeticism?’

The captain picked up his cup of water and drained it. ‘It is not what I want.’

The Magus shocked him by nodding.

The captain leaned forward. ‘That’s it? You nod?’

The Magus spread his hands. ‘I’m keep saying I’m no fool, lad. So your mother trained you all your life to be a magus, I’ll guess. Brilliant tutor, special powers. It all but drips off you – you know that?’

The captain laughed. It was a laugh full of anger, self-pity, brutal pain. A very young, horrible laugh he’d hoped he’d left behind him. ‘She-’ He paused. ‘Fuck it, I’m not in a revealing mood, old man.’

The old Magus sat still. Then he took the wine flagon, poured a cup, and drank it off. ‘The thing is,’ he began carefully, ‘the thing is, you are like a vault full of grain, or armour, or naphtha – waiting to be used in the defence of this fortress, and I’m not sure I can let you stay locked.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve discovered something. Something so very important that I’m afraid I’m not very interested in what men call morality right now. So I’m sorry for the hurt your bitch mother caused you – but your wallowing in self-pity is not going to save lives, especially mine.’

Their eyes locked.

‘A vault full of naphtha,’ the captain said, dreamily. ‘I have a vault full of naphtha.’

‘She taught you well, this tutor of yours,’ Harmodius said. ‘Now listen, Captain. The mind that opposes us is not some boglin chief from the hills – nor even an adversarius, nor even a draconis singularis. This is the shell of a man who was the greatest of our order, who has given himself to the Wild for power and mastery and as a result is, quite frankly, godlike. I don’t know why he wants this place – or rather, I can guess at some surface reasons, but I can’t guess what he really wants. Do you understand me, boy?’

The captain nodded. ‘I have a thought or two in my head, thanks. I have to help you, if we’re going to make it.’

‘Even in the moment of his treason, he was too smart for me,’ Harmodius said, ‘although, for my sins, I’ve only had to face my own failure in the last week.’ He shrugged and sat back. He seemed suddenly smaller.

The captain downed the soft cider in four long gulps.

‘I’d like to survive this, too,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I’m not against the use of power. I use it.’

Harmodius looked up. ‘Can you channel?’ he asked.

The captain frowned. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never done it. And besides, my strength is poor. Prudentia taught that we grow in strength by the ceaseless exertion of muscle, and that the exercise of power is no different.’

The Magus nodded. ‘True. Mostly true. You have a unique access to the power of the Wild.’ He shrugged.

‘Mother raised me to be the Antichrist,’ said the captain bitterly. ‘What do you expect?’

Harmodius shrugged. ‘You can wallow or you can grow. I doubt you can do both.’ He leaned forward. ‘So listen. So far, everything he has done is foreplay. He has thousands of fresh-minted boglins; he has all the spectrum of fearsome boogiemen of the northern Wild – trolls, wyverns, daemons; Outwallers; irks. He has the power to cast a cage on you – on you who can tap directly into the Power of the Wild. When he comes against us in full measure he will destroy us utterly.’

The captain shrugged and drank some wine. ‘Best surrender then,’ he said with a sneer.

‘Wake up, boy! This is serious!’ The old man slapped the table.

They glowered at each other.

‘I need your powers to be deployed for us,’ Harmodius said. ‘Can you take instruction?’

The captain looked away. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. He sat back and was suddenly serious. He raised his eyes. ‘Yes, Harmodius. I will take your instruction and stop rebelling against your obvious authority for no better reason than that you remind me of my not-father.’

Harmodius shrugged. ‘I don’t drink enough to remind you of your odious not-father,’ he said.

‘You left out the Jacks,’ the captain put in. ‘When you were listing his overwhelming strength. We caught some of them in camp, in our first sortie. Now he’s moved them elsewhere and I’ve lost them.’

‘Jacks?’ Harmodius asked. ‘Rebels?’

‘Like enough,’ the captain said. ‘More than rebels. Men who want change.’

‘You sound sympathetic,’ Harmodius said.

‘If I’d been born in a crofter’s hut, I’d be a Jack.’ The captain looked at his armour on its rack as if contemplating the social divide.

Harmodius shrugged. ‘How very Archaic of you.’ He chuckled.

‘Things are worse for the commons than they were in my boyhood,’ the captain asserted.

Harmodius stroked his beard and poured a cup of wine. ‘Lad, surely you have recognised that things are worse for everyone? Things are falling apart. The Wild is winning – not by great victories, but by simple entropy. We have fewer farms and fewer men. I saw it riding here. Alba is failing. And this fight – this little fight for an obscure castle that holds a river crossing vital to an agricultural fair – is turning into the fight of your generation. The odds are always long for us. We are never wise – when we are rich, we squander our riches fighting each other and building churches. When we are poor, we fight among ourselves for scraps – and always, the Wild is there to take the unploughed fields.’

‘I will not fail here,’ the captain said.

‘Because if you are victorious here, you will have finally turned your back on the fate that was appointed to you?’ said the Magus.

‘Everyone has to strive for something,’ the captain replied.

Albinkirk – Gaston

There was no battle at Albinkirk.

The royal army formed up for battle just south of the town, on the west bank of the great river, with the smaller Cohocton guarding their northern flank. Royal Huntsmen had been killing boglins for two days, and the squires and archers of the army were learning to take their guard duty seriously after something took almost a hundred war horses in the dark of the night. Six squires and a belted knight died in the dark, facing something fast and well armoured – bigger than a pony, faster than a cat. They drove it off eventually.

The army had risen four hours before dawn, formed their battles lines in the dark, and moved carefully forward towards the smoking town. But after all that work, the mouse still escaped the cat.

Or perhaps the lion escaped the mouse. Gaston couldn’t be sure which they were.

The king had almost three thousand knights and men-at-arms, and half again as many infantry, even without the levies who had been left to guard the camp. On the one hand, the force was the largest and best armed that Gaston had ever seen – the Albans had armour for every peasant, and while their mounted knights might seem a trifle antiquated, with too much boiled leather in garish colours over double maille, and not enough plate – the Alban king’s force was now larger than any Gallish lord’s and well mounted and well-served. His cousin had ceased commenting on them. This close to the enemy, the Royal Host had become slimmer, fitter, and altogether more competent, with well-conducted sentries and pickets. Young men no longer rode abroad without armour.

But his father King Hawthor had, by all reports, had at least five times as many men when he rode forth against the Wild, perhaps even ten times as many. And the signs were all around them – the lack of plate armour was not just a penchant for the old-fashioned. All along the road, he had seen abandoned farms and shops – once a whole town with the roofs falling in.

It gave him pause.

But on this day, as the sun rose behind them and gilded their lance tips and pennons, the enemy melted away before them, abandoning the siege – as if Albinkirk had never truly been under siege after the assault.

The army halted at the edge of the great river and the Royal Huntsmen finished off any boglins too slow to get down the great earth cliff to the beach below. Heralds counted the dead and debated whether to count the destruction of the small enemy force as a battle or not.

Gaston answered his cousin’s summons, and saluted, his visor open and his sword loose in the sheath. It seemed possible that there would be an immediate pursuit across the river, even though it seemed odd that the enemy would retreat to the east.

But Jean de Vrailly handed his great bassinet to his squire and shook his head. ‘A royal council,’ he snapped. He was angry. It seemed his mad cousin was always angry these days.

Followed only by a handful of retinue knights and a herald, they rode across the field, covered in summer flowers, towards the king.

‘We are letting the enemy escape,’ de Vrailly said. ‘There was to be a great battle. Today.’ He spat. ‘My soul is in peril, because I begin to doubt my angel. When will we fight? By the five wounds of Christ, I hate this place. Too hot – too many trees, ugly people, bestial peasants-’ He suddenly reined in his horse, dismounted, and knelt to pray.

Gaston, for once, joined him. In truth, he agreed with all of his cousin’s pronouncements. He wanted to go home too.

A herald rode up – a king’s messenger, Gaston saw. He went back to his prayers. Only when his joints ached and his knees could no longer bear the pain did Gaston raise his eyes to the king’s messenger who had been patiently waiting for them.

‘The king requests your company,’ he said.

Gaston sighed, and he and his cousin rode the rest of the way to the royal council.

It was held on horseback, and all the great lords were present – every officer or lord with fifty knights or more. The Earl of Towbray, the Count of the Border, the Prior of Harndon, who commanded the military orders, and a dozen midlands lords whom Gaston didn’t know. Edward, Bishop of Lorica, armed cap a pied, and the king’s captain of the guard, Ser Richard Fitzroy, the old king’s bastard, or so men said.

The king was conferring with a small man with a grizzled beard, who rode a small palfrey and looked like a dwarf when every other man present was mounted on a charger. He was sixty years old and wore a plain harness of munition armour – the kind that armourers made for their poorer customers.

He had dark circles under his eyes, but his eyes still had fire in them.

‘They were over the outwalls and into the suburbs after three assaults,’ he said. ‘They could run up the walls.’ He looked at Ser Alcaeus. ‘But you must know the story from this good knight.’

‘You tell it,’ said the king.

‘The mayor wouldn’t send the women to the castle. So I sent out my best men to force them in.’ He shrugged. ‘And they did. And by the grace of the good Christ, I took twenty men-at-arms and held the gate to the castle.’ He shook his head. ‘We held it for an hour or so.’ He looked at Ser Alcaeus. ‘Didn’t we?’

The Morean knight nodded. ‘We did, Ser John.’

‘How many died?’ the king asked gently.

‘Townspeople? Or my people?’ the old man asked. ‘The town itself died, my lord. We saved mostly women and children – a few hundred of them. The men died fighting, or were taken.’ He grimaced as he said it. ‘We kept two posterns open the next night – a dozen pole-axes by each – and we got another fifty refugees, but they burned the town to the ground, my lord.’ He bowed his head, slipped from his nag and knelt before his king. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord. I held my castle, but I lost your town. Do with me as you will.’

Gaston looked around. The Albans were in shock.

His cousin pushed forward. ‘All the more reason to pursue the enemy now,’ he said strongly.

The old captain shook his head. ‘No, my lord. It’s a trap. This morning, we saw a big force – Outwallers, with Sossags or Abenacki, going into the woods to the east. It’s an ambush. They want you to pursue them.’

De Vrailly coughed. ‘Am I to be afeared of a few broken men?’ he asked.

No one answered him.

‘Where is the main force of the enemy?’ the king asked.

The old man shrugged. ‘We’ve had messengers from convoys headed west, and from the Abbess,’ he said. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say that Lissen Carak is besieged.’ He took the king’s stirrup. ‘They say it’s the Fallen Magus,’ he said suddenly. ‘Men claim they saw him while the walls were being stormed, smashing breeches in the wall with lightning.’

Again, the Albans muttered, and their mounts started to grow restless.

The king made a clucking sound, as if thinking aloud.

The Prior of Harndon pushed his horse forward. He wasn’t a big man and he was as old as the Captain of Albinkirk, but something shone from him – power of a sort, based on piety, humility. His black mantle contrasted sharply with the blaze of gold and colour on the other warriors, even the bishop.

‘I would like to take my knights and outriders west, my lord, to see to Lissen Carack,’ he said. ‘It is our responsibility.’

The Count of the Borders was at Gaston’s elbow. Despite the frostiness of their last meeting, he leaned over. ‘The Sisters of Saint Thomas are his people – at least at a remove or two,’ he whispered.

The Captal de Ruth stood in his stirrups. ‘I would like to accompany them,’ he declared.

The Prior regarded him with a smile. It was a weary smile, and it probably wasn’t intended to convey insult. ‘This is a matter for the knights of my order,’ he said. ‘We are trained for it.’

The captal touched his sword hilt. ‘No man tells me my men are not trained,’ he said.

The Prior shrugged. ‘I will not take you, no matter how bad your manners.’

Gaston put a hand on his cousin’s steel clad forearm. In Alba, as in Galle, a man did not threaten or challenge a knight of God. It wasn’t done.

Or perhaps his mad cousin thought himself above that law, too.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

A commander is seldom alone.

For the captain there was paperwork, often done with Ser Adrian. Drills to supervise, general inspections, particular inspections, and an endless host of small social duties – the expectations of a band of people bonded by ties forged in fire. A band of people who, in many cases, are rejects from other communities because they lack even the most basic social skills.

The captain needed to be alone, and his usual expedient was to ride out over the fields of whatever countryside his little army occupied, find himself a copse of trees, and sit amongst them. But the enemy occupied the countryside, and the fortress itself was full to bursting with people – people everywhere.

Harmodius had left him with a set of complex instructions – in effect, a new set of phantasms to learn, all in aid of defending himself against direct workings from their current enemy. And there was a plan, too – a careful plan – reckless in risk, but cunning in scope.

He needed time and privacy to practise. And he was never alone.

Michael came, served him chicken, and was dismissed.

Bent came to pass a request from some of the farmers that they be allowed to visit their sheep in the pens under the Lower Town walls. The captain rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Sauce came in with an idea for a sortie.

‘No,’ he said.

And went somewhere else to find himself some privacy to practise thaumaturgy.

The hospital seemed like the best bet.

He climbed the stairs without meeting anyone – evening was falling outside, and he felt as if he’d fought a battle. He had to force his legs to push him up the winding stairs.

He passed the sister at the head of the stairs with a muttered word – let her assume that he was on his way to visit the wounded.

In fact, he did visit his wounded first. John Daleman, archer, lay on the bed nearest the far wall with a line of sutures from his collarbone to his waist, but by a miracle, or perhaps by the arts of the sisters, he was not infected and was now expected to live. He was also in a deeply drugged sleep, and the captain merely sat by him for a moment.

Seth Pennyman, Valet, had just come from the surgery, where they had set his broken arm and broken leg. He’d been brushed from the wall by a wyvern’s tail. Nothing had set properly, and the sisters had just reset the breaks. He was full of some drug, and muttered curses in his sleep.

Walter La Tour, gentleman man-at-arms, sat reading slowly from a beautifully illustrated psalter. Fifty-seven years old, he wore new glass spectacles on his nose. He’d received a crushing blow from the behemoth in the fight by the brook.

The captain sat down and clasped his right hand. ‘I thought I’d lost you when that thing put you down.’

Walter grinned. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me laugh, my lord. Hurts too much.’

The captain looked more closely. ‘Are those things new?’ he asked, reaching for the glass spectacles.

‘Ground by the apothocary right here,’ Walter said. ‘Hurt the nose like anything, but damn me, I haven’t been able to read this well in years.

The captain put them on his own nose. They wouldn’t really stay, the heavy horn frames merely pinching. There was a fine steel rivet holding the two lenses together so that they pivoted – the captain knew the principle, but had never seen them in action.

‘I . . . that is, we-’ La Tour looked wistful. ‘I might stay here, Captain.’

The captain nodded. ‘You’d be well suited,’ he said. ‘Although I doubt me that you are too old to chase nuns.’

‘As to that,’ Walter said, and turned crimson. ‘I am considering taking orders.’

The things you don’t know. The captain smiled and clasped the man’s free hand again. ‘Glad to see you better,’ he said.

‘I owe God,’ Walter said, by way of explanation. ‘They saved me, here. I was dead. That behemoth crushed me like an insect, and these holy women brought me back. For a reason.’

The smile was wiped from the captain’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I, too, owe something to God.’

He moved on down the line of cots. Low Sym lay with his face to the wall, his back carefully bandaged. Justice tended to be instant, in the company. He moaned.

‘You are an idiot,’ the captain said with professional affection.

Sym didn’t roll over. He moaned.

The captain was merciless, because next to La Tour and the others, Sym’s pain was like the sting of a fly. ‘You picked the fight because you wanted the girl. The girl didn’t want you, and beating up her brothers and her fellow farm-hands wasn’t going to ever make her like you. Eh?’

Moan.

‘Not that you care, because you are not above a spot of forced love, eh, Sym? This is not Galle. I didn’t approve of your way in Galle, my lad, but this is our country and we are all holed up in the fortress together, and if you so much as breathe garlic on a farm girl, with or without her permission, I’ll hang you with my own hands. In fact, Sym, let’s be straight about this. You are the single most useless fuck in my whole command, and I’d prefer to hang you, because the message that I mean business would cost me nothing. You get me?’ He leaned forward.

Sym moaned again. He was crying.

The captain hadn’t been aware that Low Sym was capable of crying. It opened up a whole new vista.

‘You want to be the hero and not the villain, Sym?’ he asked very quietly. Sym turned his head away.

‘Listen up, then. Evil is a choice. It is a choice. Doing the wicked thing is the easy way out, and it is habit forming. I’ve done it. Any criminal can use force. Any wicked person can steal. Some people don’t steal because they are afraid of being caught. Others don’t steal because it is wrong. Because stealing is the destruction of another person’s work. Rape is a violence against another person. Using violence to solve every quarrel-’ The captain paused in his moralizing lecture, because, of course, as a company of mercenaries, they tended to use violence to solve every quarrel – he laughed aloud. ‘It’s our work, but it doesn’t have to define us.’

Sym moaned.

He captain leaned close. ‘Not a bad time to decide to be a hero and not a villain, Sym. Your current line will end on a gallows. Better to end in a story than a noose.’ He thought of Tom. The man was a hillman – easy to forget, but his notions of word fame lingered. ‘Finish in a song.’

The small man wouldn’t look at him. The captain shook his head, tired and not very happy with his job.

He got up from the nursing stool by the archer and stretched.

Amicia was right behind him. Of course. There he was, the prince of hypocrites.

She looked down at Sym, and then back at the captain.

He shrugged at her.

She furrowed her brow, and shook her head, and waved him on his way.

He stumbled away, cast down.

He made an exasperated sound, and stepped out into the corridor that ran from the recovery beds to the serious patients’ ward. He walked a few paces and turned the corner only to find himself standing by Gawin Murien’s bed. The younger man had one leg bandaged from the crotch to the knee.

He sat by Ser Gawin’s bed. ‘No one will look for me here,’ he said in bitter self-mockery.

Gawin’s eyes opened.

This is not my day, the captain thought.

There was a pause long enough for vast conversations. For debate, argument, rage. Instead, they stared into each other’s eyes like lovers.

‘Well, brother,’ Gawin said. ‘So it seems you are alive, after all.’

The captain made himself breathe in and out. ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly.

Gawin nodded. ‘And no one knows who you are,’ he said.

‘You do,’ the captain said. ‘And the old wizard, Harmodius.’

Gawin nodded. ‘I gave him a wide birth,’ he said. ‘Would you help me sit up?’

The captain found himself obligingly raising his brother on his pillows – even fluffing one of them. His brother, who had killed Prudentia at his mother’s orders.

‘Mother said she was corrupting you,’ Gawin said, suddenly, as if reading his mind. But even as he got those words out, his voice broke. ‘She wasn’t, was she? We murdered her.’

The captain sat back down before his knees could give way. He wanted to flee. To have this conversation another day. Another year.

The truth was that the truth was too horrible to share. Shameful, horrible, and deeply wounding to everyone it could possibly touch. The captain sat and looked at Gawin, who still believed that they were brothers. That lie, at least, was intact.

‘Prudentia knew something she shouldn’t have,’ the captain found himself saying. He sounded remarkably calm. He was quite proud of himself, just for a moment.

Gawin made a choked noise. ‘So Mater got us to kill her,’ he said, after another mammoth pause.

‘Just as she egged you on every day to torment me,’ the captain said bitterly.

Gawin shrugged. ‘I realised that, even before you left. Richard never saw it, but I did.’ He looked out the arrow slit by his head. ‘I did something terrible, down in Lorica. I got some good men killed and I did something despicable.’

Suddenly the captain found Gawin’s eyes locked on his again. ‘When I was kneeling in the mud, acting the craven, I realised that I had to avenge myself or go mad. And – and let me fucking say this, brother - I realised in one flash that I had been the instrument of your destruction, as surely as if I’d killed you myself. You think it didn’t touch me? When we found your body, and how did you pull that off? – when we found your body, I rode away into the Wild. I was gone – off my head. I knew who killed Lord Gabriel. I did. Dickon and I did, together. We hated you into death, didn’t we?’ He shook his head. ‘Except now you are not dead, and I’m not sure where that leaves us. You are a magus?’ he asked.

The captain sighed. ‘Mater had me trained as a magus,’ he said. ‘By Prudentia. Even while telling you two how effeminate I was, and what a poor knight I made. I had sworn never to reveal my studies – to her, to God, to all the saints.’ He laughed bitterly.

‘Oh, my God,’ Gawin groaned. ‘Prudentia was a magus. So . . . oh, my God. Mater provided the arrow.’

‘Of Witch Bane,’ the captain said.

Gawin was whiter, if anything, than when the captain had first seen him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We both knew you loved her.’

The captain shrugged.

‘Gabriel-’

‘Gabriel, Viscount Murien is dead,’ the captain said. ‘I am the captain. Some men call me the Red Knight.’

‘Red Knight? Like some nameless bastard?’ Gawin said. ‘You’re my brother, Gabriel Moderatus Murien, the heir of the Duke of the North, son of the king’s sister.’

‘Oh, I’m the son of the king’s sister all right,’ the captain said, and then clamped down, before any more came out.

Gawin choked. He sat up, and cursed. A slow thread of scarlet worked its way across his groin. ‘No!’ he muttered.

The captain nodded. ‘Yes. If it makes you feel any better, we’re only half brothers,’ he said.

‘Sweet Christ and his five wounds,’ Gawin said.

The captain came to a decision – the kind of decision he made, where he threw out one set of options and adopted another, like life on the battlefield. He moved his chair closer to his half-brother. ‘Tell me this terrible fucking thing you did in Lorica,’ he said. He took Gawin’s hand. ‘Tell me, and I’ll forgive you for killing Prudentia. She already forgives you. I’ll explain sometime. Tell me what happened in Lorica, and let’s start again, from age nine, when we were friends.’

Gawin lay back, so that their eyes broke contact. ‘The price of your forgiveness is steep, brother.’ He was suddenly red as blood. Then he hung his head. ‘I am deeply ashamed. I would not confess this to a priest.’

‘I’m no priest, and I have plenty of which to be ashamed. Some day I, too, will explain. Now tell me.’

‘Why?’ Gawin asked. ‘Why? You’ll only hate me more – add contempt to the list of your grievances. I played the caitiff, I was craven and I grovelled under another man’s sword.’ Tears came down his face. ‘I failed and lost. I was nothing. For my sins, Satan sent this,’ and he pulled down his shirt to show the scales that had grown from his waist to his neck on the right side.

The captain looked at his brother – still so proud, even after such a thing happened, and all unknowing of his own pride. So easy to understand others the captain thought with wry amusement. And surprising sorrow. He couldn’t keep his emotional distance with Gawin.

‘Losing is not, in and of itself, a sin.’ The captain rubbed his beard. ‘It took me years to learn that, but I did. Failure is not sin. Wallowing in failure-’ he hung his own head ‘-is something at which I can excel, if I allow it to myself, but that’s more like the sin.’

‘You sound like a man of God,’ Gawin said.

‘Fuck God,’ the captain said.

‘Gabriel!’

‘Seriously, Gawin, what has God ever done for me?’ the captain laughed. ‘If I awaken after a sword thrust with the eternal flames burning my sorry arse, I’ll spit in the maker’s face, because that’s all I was ever offered in a rigged game, and I will have played it anyway.’

That blasphemy ended all conversation for a long time. The sun was setting.

Gawin rolled his hips a little. ‘My groin is bleeding again. Can you re-wrap it? I can’t stomach the nursing sisters wrapping my groin.’

‘Crap,’ the captain said. What had been a thread of scarlet was now a rapidly spreading stain – a pool of blood. ‘Jesus wept! No, I’m getting expert help.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll both likely die of the family curse – overweening pride – but I don’t have to actively help you die.’ He scraped his chair back. ‘Amicia?’ he called. ‘Amicia?’

She came so quickly that he knew – knew from her face, as well – that she’d heard every word they had said.

And she had a length of boiled linen in one hand and a pair of sharp scissors in the other. ‘Hold him down and this will go faster,’ she said, all business.

Gawin turned his face away.

‘Really,’ the captain said, when the bandage was off, ‘you should enjoy having such a beauty work on your groin.’

Amicia paused. He looked into her eyes for the first time in days and felt like a fool. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered weakly.

But she held his gaze. And then he saw her wink at Gawin. ‘A secret for a secret,’ she said, with that not-a-smile in the corner of her mouth. She bent over the long wound on the young knight’s leg, and when her lips were a finger’s width from his thigh, she breathed out – a long breath – and as she breathed, the wound closed. The captain saw the power flow through her, a great pulse of power, as great as anything he’d ever handled.

In his sight, it was bright green.

She looked up from her work and just a flicker of her eyes, and in them was a charge and a promise and in that flicker of a heartbeat he accepted both.

‘What did she do?’ Gawin asked. The captain’s broad torso was blocking his ability to see. ‘It’s all numb.’

‘A poultice,’ the captain said cheerfully. The room suddenly smelled of summer flowers. She was wrapping fresh linen around the wound, sponging off the fresh blood and the older dried blood.

Gawin tried to sit up, and the captain held him down. Under his left hand, something felt very wrong with his half-brother’s shoulder, and he rolled the edge of his shirt collar back.

Gawin’s shoulder was finely scaled, like a fish, or a wyvern. The captain ran his hand over it, and behind him, Amicia’s breath came in a sharp gasp.

Gawin groaned. ‘And you think you are cursed by God?’

Amicia ran her hand over the young knight’s scales, and the captain found himself instantly jealous.

‘I have seen this before,’ she said.

Gawin brightened perceptively. ‘You have?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Can it be cured?’ he asked.

She bit her lip. ‘I really don’t know, but it was not uncommon among . . . among . . .’ she stammered.

The captain thought that an astrologer would have said it was a day for secrets, and their revelation.

‘I will look into it,’ she said with the assurance of the medico, and she swept from the room, the pale grey of her over-gown fluttering behind her.

Gawin watched her, and the captain watched her and then. ‘She used power,’ Gawin said quietly.

‘Yes,’ the captain said.

‘She is-’ Gawin let his head fall back. ‘I was headed north,’ he began. ‘The king had dismissed me from court for shooting my big mouth off. I fell in love – oh, I am telling this badly. I was trying to impress the Queen’s Maid-of-Honour. She . . . never mind. I said something I shouldn’t have said to the king and he sent me off to the Wild to gain glory.’ Gawin shook his head. ‘I have a great name as a bane of the Wild. You know why? Because after we killed you – well, we thought we did – I rode away to die in the Wild. Alone.’ He laughed. ‘A daemon attacked me, and I killed it.’ His laugh was a little wild. ‘Hand to hand. I lost my dagger in the fight, and I battered it to death, and so men call me Hard Hands.’

‘Pater must have been very proud,’ the captain muttered.

‘Oh, he was,’ Gawin answered. ‘So proud he sent me to court so the king could send me away. I rode north to Lorica, and put up in an inn.’ He turned his head away. ‘I’m not sure I can tell this while I look at you. I took rooms. A foreign knight came with a retinue – I don’t know how many, but it was a hundred knights, at least. Jean de Vrailly, God curse his name. He called me out into the courtyard, challenged me to combat, and attacked me.’ Gawin fell silent.

‘So? You were always a better swordsman than I,’ the captain said.

Gawin shook his head. ‘No. No, you were the better swordsman. Ser Hywel told me after you died; you’d pretended to be inept.’

The captain shrugged. ‘Fine. You were, and are, a fine man-at-arms.’

‘Ser Jean imagines himself to be the very best knight in all of the world,’ Gawin said.

‘Really?’ the captain said. ‘How very dangerous.’

Gawin snorted. ‘You really haven’t changed.’

‘I have, you know,’ the captain said.

‘I never thought I’d be able to chuckle while I told this. He was in armour – I was not.’

The captain nodded. ‘He would be, being a Galle. I was just fighting there. They take themselves very seriously.’

‘I only had a riding sword – by Saint George, I make too many excuses. I held him – took a wound, and he punched my sword into one of my squires. My own sword killed my sworn man.’ Now all the humour was gone, and Gawin was somewhere between toneless and sobbing. ‘I lost all sense of the fight, and he mastered me – pushed me down into the dirt. Made me admit myself bested.’

How that must have tasted, the captain thought. Because he had imagined doing exactly that to this man a thousand times. He sat by the very man’s bedside and tried to think what had changed in a few minutes, that now, it seemed impossible that he had imagined his half-brother’s humiliation. Desired it. Tasted and savoured it, just two days ago.

‘Then he went into the inn and killed my senior squire,’ Gawin said. He shrugged. ‘I have vowed to kill him.’

The captain had a restless urge to go follow Amicia. He felt the need to extract a vow of silence. Or was that just an excuse? And the pain – raw, like a visible bruise – in Gawin’s voice – he’d only just forced himself to decide in favour of the younger man, and now he was his confessor.

It was like being the captain.

‘Your enemy is my enemy,’ he said simply, and leaned down, and put his arms around his brother’s neck. Amongst the Muriens, a good expression of hate was a way of showing love. Sometimes, the only way.

‘Oh, Gabriel!’ Gawin said, and burst into tears.

‘Gabriel died, Gawin,’ the captain said.

Gawin dried his eyes. ‘You have problems of your own, no doubt.’ He managed a smile.

‘Where would you like me to begin?’ the captain said. ‘I’m engaged in a siege with an enemy who can deploy any kind of creature, who outnumbers me ten or fifteen or twenty to one, and who is led by a ruthless genius.’

Gawin managed another smile. ‘My brother is a ruthless genius.’

The captain grinned.

Gawin nodded. ‘You’re about to try something insane. I can taste it. Remember the chicken coup? Remember your alchemical experiment?’

The captain looked around, as if he feared an eavesdropper. ‘He’s going to hit us hard, tonight. He has to. Up until now, to all intents and purposes, he’s been losing the siege. The way the Wild works, eventually, some one of his own will see him as weak and take him down.’

Gawin shrugged. ‘They’re the enemy. Who knows what they think?’

The captain returned a grim smile. ‘I do. All too well.’

‘So?’ Gawin asked, after a difficult moment. ‘Why do you know? What they think?’

The captain drew along breath.

Why do you curse God every morning?

Because-

‘Maybe sometime I’ll tell you,’ the captain said.

Gawin absorbed that. ‘The man of secrets. Very well. What are you about to do?’

The captain shrugged. ‘I’m going to try for him. Try to drag him down. The old Magus is in on it.’

Gawin sat up. ‘You’re going for Tho-’

‘Don’t speak his name,’ the captain said. ‘Naming calls.’

Gawin bit his lip. ‘I wish I were fit to ride.’

‘You will be, soon enough.’ The captain leaned forward and embraced his half-brother. ‘I’d rather be your friend than your foe. Foe was merely a habit.’

Gawin patted the captain’s back gently. ‘Gabriel! I’m sorry!’

The captain held the young knight until he slept. It didn’t take long.

‘I’m not Gabriel,’ he said to his sleeping half-brother. And then he went to find the woman. But he didn’t have to go far. She was sitting on a chair in the corridor.

Their eyes met. Hers said, Don’t come too close – I’m vulnerable just now.

He wasn’t sure what his own said, but he stopped at arm’s length. ‘You heard,’ he said, far more harshly than he intended.

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t offend me by requiring my silence. I hear the confessions of dying men. I care nothing for the secrets of the mighty.’

In his head, he knew that her anger was a kind of armour to keep him farther away. But it hurt, anyway. ‘Sometimes, secrets are secret for a reason,’ he said.

‘You curse God because your mother was unfaithful to your father and you grew to manhood with the torments of your brothers?’ She spat. ‘I thought you were braver than that.’ She shrugged. ‘Or do you mean that you intend to sortie out into the night and die?’

He took a deep breath. Counted carefully to fifty in High Archaic, and let the breath go. ‘You have been in the Wild,’ he said softly.

She looked away. ‘Begone.’

‘Amicia-’ He almost called her Love, and he stammered. ‘I have been in your palace. On your bridge. I’m not making judgment.’

‘I know, you idiot,’ she spat at him.

He was stunned by her venom. ‘I will protect you!’ he said.

‘I don’t want your protection!’ she said, the anger all but forming frost on her lips. ‘I am not a suffering princess in a tower! I am a woman of God, and my God is the only protection I require, and I do not know why my power does not come from the sun! I have enough weight of sin on my head without you adding to my burdens!’ She got to her feet and gave him a sharp push. ‘I am an Outwaller chit, a slut, a woman lower than a serf. You, it turns out, are some lost prince. You can, I have no doubt, cozen any woman you like, looks, money and power!’ She pushed him again. ‘I AM NOT FOR YOU.’

He was not a blushing youth of sixteen. He caught her arm as she pushed him, and pulled. He thought she would fall into his arms.

She almost did. But she caught herself, and his kiss was deflected. His arms pinned her, and she said, with all the ice a woman can muster: ‘Shall I tell Sym you forced me? Captain?’

He let her go. Just in that moment, he hated her.

Just in that moment, the feeling was probably mutual.

She walked away to the main hospital room, and he had nowhere to which he could retreat except the dispensary behind him.

On the other hand, it was empty, and just then what he needed, perhaps more than ever before in his life, was to be alone.

He collapsed into the heavy wooden chair in the darkened room, and before he knew it, he was crying.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

Sauce had the duty. She was fresh enough to her promotion that she still enjoyed the responsibility – made a special effort to be clean, neat, her armour well-polished, her square-topped cap neat as a pin. She knew that a lot of the older men resented taking orders from a woman, and she knew that a perfect turn-out helped.

She set the guards on the main gate, and marched the duty detachment to the posterns, relieving each post in turn – challenge, password, posting by the numbers, and accepting the salutes – she loved the ceremony. And she loved to see the effect on the farmers and their families. Farmers clean and oil their tools, tour their livestock, morning and night. Farmers know a patient craftsman when they see one, even when the craft is war.

She relieved the last post and marched the off-going detachment through the courtyard to the base of the West Tower, where she dismissed them. Two slow-moving archers were detailed to wash the heavy wood piling driven into the ground for sword practice – Low Sym had been tied to it for his punishment, and it had various substances on it that needed cleaning off.

Then she climbed the steps to the tower, listening to the off-going soldiers. She was listening for criticism; she expected it. She wasn’t really good enough to be a corporal. She wanted to be – but there was so much to learn.

And she knew that this was going to be a tough night. All across the garrison tower men were polishing, sharpening, trimming a belt end, checking the stuffing on a gambeson sleeve. A thousand rituals to conjure safety and luck in battle. And they were all tired.

At the head of the stairs stood Bad Tom, her nemesis, with his cronies. She straightened her back, noticed that even though he was supposedly off-duty he was still fully armed, wearing full harness but for the gauntlets and the bassinet, which sat together on the plank table. She noted that his armour was as carefully polished as her own.

He was talking to Bent, and they were smiling.

She met their looks and glared. ‘What?’

‘Your people look good enough for the Royal Guard,’ Tom said with a rich chuckle.

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ she spat. She looked past him, over the walled balcony that let light and air into the tower from the courtyard. She could see the priest from here, climbing out on the wall. She wondered what he was doing there.

Bent slapped his thigh and roared. ‘Told you!’ he shouted, and went back to his game, and she forgot Father Henry. ‘Can’t even take a fucking compliment.’

She glared at both of them and went to the roof to watch her posts. ‘Where are all the men-at-arms? Captain left a note-’

Tom nodded to her. ‘I’ve got it, Corporal. I’m preparing the sortie.’

Sauce felt a keen disappointment edged with anger. ‘A sortie? But-’

‘You have the duty,’ Tom said. ‘It’s my turn.’

’It’s always your turn,’ she shot back.

He nodded, unrepentant. ‘I’m primus pilus, Sauce. I can take the sortie out until Christ returns to earth – maybe after. Wait your turn. Sweeting.’

She drew herself up. But Bad Tom shook his head.’Nay – never mind me, Sauce. That was ill-said. But I want the sorties. The lads need to see me fight.’

‘And you love it,’ Sauce said. She put her nose very close to his. ‘I love it too, you bastard.’

Tom laughed. ‘Point taken, Corporal.’

She backed off. ‘I want my turn. Anyway – where is everyone?’

‘The boys are all off confessing to the priest. Don’t worry, Sauce. We probably won’t go. But there’s going to be a sortie ready all night, every night, in the covered way.’

Sauce shook her head and went up the steps to the roof-top feeling left out.

Full darkness had almost fallen, and the sounds made by the various species of besiegers would have been chilling if she’d let herself think of them that way, but she didn’t. Instead she stood with the crew on the great ballista – as of today, re-mounted on a complex set of gimbals designed by the old Magus. She tried it herself. Now it moved like a living thing. No Head, the man responsible for the machine, patted it affectionately. ‘The old fuck magicked it, that’s what he did. It’s alive. Going to get us a wyvern, next time one comes.’

She swung it back and forth. It was physically pleasant to move – like playing some sort of game.

‘Sometimes a machine is just a machine,’ said a strong voice, and the old man himself emerged from the darkness. She had never been so close to a real magus, and she started.

‘It’s our good luck that we have fifty skilled craftsmen suddenly among us. A pargeter, who can draw precisely. Blade smiths who can make springs. A joiner who can do fine carpentry.’ He shrugged. ‘In truth, it is an Archaic mechanism I found in a book. It was the craftsmen who made it.’ Nonetheless, the old man seemed very satisfied with it, and he gave it an affectionate pat. ‘Although I confess I gave it a touch of spirit.’

‘Which he magicked it, and now it’s alive!’ said No Head happily. ‘Going to bag us a wyvern.

Harmodius shrugged as if mocking the ignorance of men – while accepting their plaudits.

His eyes lingered on her.

Christ – did the old Magus find her attractive? That was a chilling thought. She wriggled involuntarily.

He caught her movement and laughed. Then stopped laughing. ‘Something is moving down between the forts,’ he said.

She leaned over the tower. ‘Wait a little,’ she said. Then, ‘How did you know?’

His eyes glowed a little in the dark. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I can make the sky bright for a moment.’

‘No need,’ she said.

Sure enough, there was a low clash, as if of cymbals, and then another.

‘Captain put lines of tin bangles across the fields,’ she said as the ballista spun, No Head pulled its lever and a bolt crashed out into the darkness.

On the next tower, the onager released a bucket of gravel, and suddenly the night was full of screams.

A retaliatory bolt of purple-green lightning shot out of the darkness and struck the tower on which the onager rested. Sparks flew as if a smith was pounding red-hot metal.

‘Christ, what the fuck was that?’ Sauce asked the darkness. Her night-sight was ruined by the green bolt; all she could see was a pattern on her retinas.

Old Harmodius leaned over the tower, and a bolt of fire sprayed from his hand – it passed almost exactly down the line of the green lightning, as far as the dancing images on her retinas could discern.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he said. Over and over.

His target caught fire in the distance – a giant of a man, or an oddly misshapen tree. Perhaps two trees.

‘Dear God,’ Harmodius muttered. ‘Again!’ he called.

No Head needed no urging. Sauce watched his crew as they danced through their drill – two men wound the winch, slipped the cocking mechanism into place, removed the winch again, a third carried the twenty-pound bolt as easily as if it was made of straw, dropped it into the charge-trough and pushed it back until the huge nock engaged the heavy string. No Head spun his machine with one hand, gave the burning tree-man a hint of windage, and pulled the release.

Another line of lightning, this one levin-bright – flashed onto the north tower and rock exploded. Men screamed. Her men.

She turned and ran for the stairs. And then paused. She couldn’t be in both towers at the same time.

Behind her the two valets winding the bow sweated to do it as fast as they could, but No Head didn’t look at them or at Simkin, a giant, who dropped the next bolt into the trough with perfect timing, so that just as the string clicked into place on the latch, the nock slid back and engaged the string, and No Head had the weapon aimed.

Harmodius grunted something, and cast fire on the earth. His fire was caught as if by a basket of green light, and cast straight back at them; quicker than thought, his own basket of blue lightning caught it and he threw it back-

No Head pulled the release.

The bolt hit the man-tree squarely in the torso-trunk. There was a roar and a burst of ball lightning like a summer night, and the tower trembled. The ball struck the curtain wall over the main gate and there was a cataclysmic explosion – like pouring water on a hot rock, expanded a thousand times. The curtain wall groaned, buckled and collapsed outward, and the new covered way behind the gate started to take hits.

Someone was alert and still moving on the onager tower, though, because a basket of red-hot gravel – another of the Magus’s innovations – flew from the onager, the pebbles flashing through the air like meteorites.

All the lights went out together, and then there was quiet, punctuated by screams from the plain far below. And moans.

‘Again!’ Harmodius called. ‘Same target. Hit him again! Before he can-’

And then there was a wall of green light across the sky, and the onager tower exploded in sparks and a shower of stars. One long scream rang out across the night – and then the top of the tower leaned out, and out, and fell into the night, taking the onager and four men of the company with it. It crashed to the floor of the valley four hundred feet below, a long rumble like an avalanche.

And then there was only silence.

Sauce had made it to the courtyard when the green fire hit, and she was standing close enough to the gate to be hit by stone chips from the curtain wall. A stone slammed into her shoulder from the broken tower. Up on the main donjon, she could see Harmodius as he leaned out over the wall, with eldritch blue fire coursing over his hands.

The gate had taken a glancing hit and whole chunks of the crenellations had fallen on the covered way, crushing part of the roof. Inside, men and horses of Bad Tom’s sortie were trapped in the pitch black, and there were horse screams of anguish and human shouts.

‘Get torches! Lanterns! On me!’ Sauce shouted.

Just under the back end of the covered way, Ser John Poultney was lying under the ruin of his charger, and his leg was broken. Sauce went with a pair of archers – One Lug and Skinch – to get the horse off him. The archers used spears to raise the carcass and Ser John worked not to scream.

The roof of the covered way had taken most of the gate’s collapse, and it hung askew, and the beams were creaking ominously. It was pitch black under the roof, and men with lanterns appeared at last as the first man-at-arms emerged leading a bucking war horse whose off left foot almost killed the just-rescued Ser John. The horse was wild, and more archers grabbed for his reins to hold his head, and then off-duty valets were pouring out of the main tower.

‘Where’s Tom?’ she asked. She plunged deeper into the gloom, and Skinch, usually not a man with any balls whatsoever, followed her. The lantern lit a dozen horsemen fighting their mounts for control in the enclosed space. All of them were dismounted, hauling at their horse’s heads, and the horses would calm for a moment and then go off again as another horse continued to panic in the darkness and the noise. Ser John’s dead horse was not helping – it smelled of blood and fear . . .

‘Get them out!’ Tom roared.

Hooves were flying. The men were in full armour, but the horses were not calming, and soon enough they’d kill their riders, armour or no.

With a whoosh the gate behind Tom exploded in flame. It illuminated the narrow space and the plunging horses, the men’s armour, like a foretaste of hell.

Almost as one, the horses turned and ran from the fire. Most of the men-at-arms were knocked from their feet.

Skinch flattened himself against the wooden wall and Sauce, still in her harness, tried to cover him as the great brutes pounded past, leaping the corpse of the dead horse.

Out in the courtyard the valets were ready, and they lunged for reins, threw sacks over the horses’ heads and spoke to them calmly and authoritatively, like lords speaking to their serfs. They took control of the horses quickly, kindly, and ruthlessly.

The men-at-arms began to get to their feet.

Sauce realised that the fire at the gate wasn’t generating any heat about the same moment that the captain stepped out of the darkness and raised his hands.

The flames went out like a candle in the wind.

‘Tom? Let’s get a head count. Anyone missing?’ he shouted, walking past her. It was dark again, but he seemed to know she was there – he turned unerringly to her. ‘We lost a dozen men in the Onager tower. Go and see if anyone can be saved.’

His eyes glowed in the dark.

‘M’lord,’ she nodded in the pitch black and went back into the relative light of the courtyard, past a dozen angry war horses and the men trying to calm them. Farmers and their wives and daughters were crowding the door yards and windows.

The onager tower looked like a broken tooth. About a third of the upper floor was gone, and Sauce thought the only blessing was that it had fallen out – away from the courtyard – and not in.

The second floor roof had collapsed inward though, showering stones and roof beams on sleeping soldiers. Geslin – the youngest archer in the company – lay dead, crushed under a beam, his broken body horrible in the flickering fire of the fallen floor. Dook – a useless sod at the best of time – was trying to get the beam off him, and was crying.

Sauce put on her best command voice, walled off her panic, and shouted, ‘I need some help up here!’

Archers poured up the ladders to her. Men she knew – Flarch, her own archer, and Cuddy, perhaps the best archer in the company, and Rust, perhaps the worst; Long Paw, moving like a dancer, and Duggin, who was as big as a house. They got the beam up off the dead boy, and discovered Kanny pinned under it, unconscious and with a lot of blood under him. And behind him, wedged into a safe space made by a window ledge, was Kessin, the fattest man in the company.

More and more men came – the Lanthorn men, the Carters from the courtyard, and the other farmers – at unbelievable speed they cleared the heavy timbers and the floor. One of Master Random’s men, who had been working with the Magus, rigged a sling mechanism, and before the sun began to rise, the heavy stones that could be saved from the wreckage were being raised over the lip of the ruined tower and laid in the courtyard.

The captain stood there looking tired, hands on hips above his golden belt, watching the work. He didn’t turn his head. ‘Well done, Sauce. Go to bed.’

She shrugged. ‘Lots left to do,’ she said wearily.

He turned to her with a smile. Very quietly, like a lover, he leaned in to her ear. ‘This is the first bad night of a hundred to come,’ he whispered. ‘Save your strength. Go to bed.’

She sighed and looked at him, struggling to hide her adoration. ‘I can do it,’ she said fiercely.

‘I know you can do it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Save it for when we need it. I’m going to bed. You go to bed. Yes?’

She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. Walked away . . .

. . . and realised that her bed had been in the onager tower. She sighed.

Lissen Carak – Michael

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Eight

Last night the Fallen Magus attacked us in person. The captain said his powers are greater even than those that weave the walls together, and despite our efforts he toppled the south-west tower, where the onager engine was, and killed four men and several boys.

No Head, an archer, hit the Fallen Magus with a ballista bolt. Many men saw the bolt go home.

We now have the help of Lord Harmodius, the King’s Magus, who duelled with the Fallen Magus with fire. Men hid their heads in terror. The Fallen Magus brought down the curtain wall by the postern gate, but Sauce saved many men and horses with her quick response.

Under the manuscript page, No Head and Sauce were crossed out. In their place were the names Thomas Harding and Alison Grave.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

In the end, they lost six archers and one man-at-arms. It was a hard blow. The captain looked at their names, crossed them off the list, and grunted.

On the other hand, he had the Carter boys, the Lanthorn boys, and Daniel Favor. And a likely goldsmith’s apprentice named Adrian who was a painter and a lanky youngster called Allan.

He handed the list to Tom. ‘Fix the watchbill. Messire Thomas Durrem-’

‘Dead as a nail,’ Tom said. He shrugged. ‘Gone with the tower. Didn’t even find his body.’

The captain winced. ‘We’re down another lance, then.’

Tom nodded, and chewed on a lead. ‘I’ll find you a man-at-arms,’ he said.

The Bridge Castle – Ser Milus

Ser Milus stood with the seven new men-at-arms. They were, in his professional opinion, good men who needed a swift kick in the arse.

He had a pell in the courtyard; Master Random’s apprentices had levered a huge stone out of the flagging, dug a hole as deep as a man’s was tall, and put in a post – it was handy to have so many willing hands.

He walked around the pell, hefting his own favoured weapon. The pole-axe. The hammer head was crenellated like a castle with four miniature spikes projecting from it. On the other side, a long, slightly curved spike protruded, and from the top, a small, wickedly sharp spearhead. A foot of solid steel extended from the butt, pointed like a chisel.

Ser Milus spun it between his hands. ‘I don’t expect we’ll fight mounted, from here on out,’ he said conversationally.

Gwillam, the sergeant, nodded.

‘Let’s see you, then,’ Ser Milus said. He nodded to Gwillam, who stepped forward. By the Company’s standard, his armour was poor. He had an old cote of plates, mail chausses, and a shirt of good mail with heavy leather gauntlets covered in iron plates. It was, to Ser Milus’ eyes, very old-fashioned.

Gwillam had a heavy spear. He stepped up to the pell, chose his distance, and thrust. The spearhead went an inch into the oak. He shrugged, and tugged it clear with a heavy pull.

Dirk Throatlash, the next of the convoy’s men-at-arms, strode up and took a negligent swipe at it with his heavy double-bladed axe. He embedded his axe head deeply in the post.

Archers were gathering in the towers, and merchants had emerged to watch from their wagons.

John Lee, former shipman, also had a double-bitted axe. He swung hard and precisely – matching Dirk’s cut and carving a heavy chip out of the post.

Ser Milus watched them all.

‘That’s what you do at the pell?’ he asked Gwillam.

The sergeant shrugged. ‘I haven’t done much at a pell since I was a boy,’ he admitted.

Ser Milus nodded. ‘Want to kill a monster?’ he said to the men. ‘Or a man?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ Dirk said. His mates laughed.

Ser Milus didn’t even turn his head. There was no warning. One moment, he was leaning on his war-hammer, and the next, he had tossed Dirk Throatlash into the mud, face first, and still had one arm behind his back.

‘Wrong,’ he said.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Dirk wailed.

Ser Milus let him up. He smiled, because now he had their attention.

‘We’re all going to practise at the pell, every day we don’t fight on the wall,’ he said, conversationally. ‘Like it was real. I’ll teach you how. And if you can cut through it – good!’ He grinned. ‘And then you can demonstrate your zeal by helping put in the next pell.’ He pointed to John Lee. ‘You have an accurate cut.’

Lee shrugged. ‘I cut a lot of wood.’

‘Try again. But this time, cut as if you were fighting a man.’ Ser Milus waved at the pell.

The shipman stepped up and lifted his axe, like a man preparing to hit a ball.

Ser Milus nodded approvingly. ‘Good guard.’

The former shipman cut at the pell, and a chip of wood flew. He got the axe back to his shoulder and cut again.

Ser Milus let him go on for ten cuts. He was breathing hard, and his tenth cut wasn’t nearly as strong as the ninth.

Milus twirled his grey moustache with his left hand. ‘Leave off. Breathe.’ He nodded. ‘Watch.’

He stepped up to the pell, his pole-axe held under hand.

He cut up with the back-spike, and it just touched the post. He danced to the right on his toes, despite his armour, and his cut finished with the pole-axe head behind his shoulder – a very similar position to that of the shipman’s axe. Then he cut down, again stepping lightly, and the hammer-head slammed into the post, leaving four deep gouges. The knight stepped like a cat, back and then forward, powering the spearhead in an underhanded thrust – stepped wide, as if avoiding a blow, and reversed the pole-axe. The spike slammed sideways into the post, bounced, and Ser Milus was close into the pole and shortened his grip for another strike.

Lee nodded. ‘I could almost see the man you was fighting,’ he admitted.

Gwillam prided himself as a good man of arms, and he sprang forward. ‘Let me try,’ he said. His own weapon was a heavy spear with a head as long as his arm and as wide as the palm of his hand. He sprang forward on the balls of his feet, cut the pell – twice from one side, once from the other, and backed away.

‘But use your hips,’ Ser Milus said. ‘More power in your hips than in your arms. Save your arms; they get tired the fastest.’ He nodded to them. ‘It’s just work, friends. The smith practises his art every day – the pargeter daubs, the farmer ploughs, the shipman works his ship. Bad soldiers lie on their backs. Good soldiers do this. All day, every day.’

Throatlash shook his head. ‘My arms are tired already,’ he said.

Ser Milus nodded. ‘The irks ain’t tired.’

Southford by Albinkirk – Prior Ser Mark Wishart

The king sent two messengers with the knights when the Prior took his men north-west from Albinkirk’s souther suburb, Southford. The Prior moved his men carefully over the ground, their black surcotes somehow blending into the undergrowth. His men rode easily through the densest stands of woods, through thickets of spring briars.

They halted frequently. Men would dismount and creep forward, usually over the brow of a steep hill, and wave them forward.

Despite the halts, they made good progress. Individual knights would ride away – sometimes at right angles to the line of march – and unerringly find them again.

The thing the two king’s messengers found hardest to understand was the silence. The Knights of St Thomas never spoke. They rode in silence, and their horses were equally silent. They had no pages, no valets, no servants and no squires. Forty spare horses – a fortune in war horses – followed the main body, packed with forage bags and spares, but otherwise without bridle or lead. Yet the spares followed briskly enough.

It was, as the older messenger said, uncanny.

Still, it was a bold thing, to be riding through the North Country with the Knights of St Thomas. Galahad Acon had been named for the saint’s church in London, and felt he was almost one of them. His partner, Diccon Alweather, had been a professional messenger in the old king’s day, a weathered man with more scars than a badly tanned hide, as he liked to say himself.

The messengers were used to a hard day riding and no company but their horses, but it was a hard day, even for them – fifteen leagues over broken country that challenged their horsemanship every hour. The knights didn’t seem to tire. Many of them were older than Alweather.

Towards evening, one of the youngest of the knights rode back to the main body, and led them off to the right, north, and then up to a steep hill.

Without a word, every knight dismounted. They drew their long swords from their saddle scabbards, split into four groups of fifteen, and walked off.

The Prior waited a moment, looking at the two messengers. ‘Wait here,’ he said, aloud. The first words Galahad had heard from any of them since they left the Royal Camp.

The black-clad knights vanished into the woods.

An hour passed. It was cold – the spring evenings were longer, but not much warmer, and Galahad couldn’t decide whether he was cold enough to take his great cloak out of the bundle behind his crupper or not. He didn’t want to be caught dismounted at the wrong moment. He cursed the Prior and his silence.

He kept looking at the older messenger, Alweather, who waited, apparently calm, without fidgeting, for the whole hour.

‘Here they come,’ Galahad said suddenly.

The Prior walked up to his horse and sheathed his sword on the saddle. ‘Come,’ he said. He was smiling.

He walked off up the steep hill, and all the horses followed him.

‘Uncanny,’ Alweather said. He spat, and made an avert sign.

They wound around the hill, widdershins, climbing as they went around. It seemed a tedious way of getting to the top, but in the very last light, Galahad could see that the crown of the hill was steep and girt in rock.

The horse ahead of him shied, and then was quiet. Galahad looked down and saw a corpse. And then another. And another and another.

They were not human. He wasn’t sure what they were – small and brown, with big heads, and cords of muscle, beautifully worked leather clothes and huge wounds made by two-handed swords.

‘Good Christ,’ Alweather said aloud.

There was the smell of fire, and then they came over a crest.

The top of the hill was hollow. It was like a giant cup, and the knights had three fires going, and food cooking. Galahad Acon’s stomach, outraged by the inhuman corpses and their red-green blood, now seized on the smell of food. Pea soup.

‘Unsaddle your horse, and curry him,’ the Prior said. ‘After that, he’ll see to himself.’

Alweather frowned, but Galahad refused to be moved by the older man’s caution. Galahad was suffused with joy. He was living one of his secret dreams.

Alweather, clearly wanted to go back to the king.

‘They fought a battle,’ Galahad said, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. ‘And we didn’t even hear them.’

The Prior smiled at Galahad. ‘Not really a battle,’ he said. ‘More of a massacre. The irks didn’t see us coming.’ He shrugged. ‘Have some soup. Tomorrow will be harder.’

Lissen Carak

It was a quiet night. The besieged collapsed into sleep. Sauce cried out in her dreams, and Tom lay and snored like a hog. Michael muttered into his outstretched arm, sleeping alone. The Abbess wept softly in the dark, and rose to kneel, praying at the triptych that sat on a low podium in the corner of her cell. Sister Miram lay on her stomach to sleep, exhausted from healing so many wounded men. Low Sym woke himself up repeatedly as he shouted, and then lay with his own arms wrapped around him staring at horrors in the dark until the pretty novice came and sat with him.

But however long and dark the night was, the enemy was quiet, and the besieged slept.

In the first light of morning, they struck.

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Nine

Today, the enemy burned all the country around the fortress, as far as the woods. The men – the traitor Jacks – burned all the farms, all the steadings and barns – even the patches of woods.

The farmers stood on the walls and watched. Some wept. We were cursed for being poor soldiers, for allowing the fields to be burned.

The Abbess came out and watched, and then promised that it would all be rebuilt.

But many hearts turned. And before noon, the creatures of the enemy were in the air over the fortress, and we could feel them again.

Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress

It was a simple, unstoppable act that changed the nature of the siege, and that cut at the farmers and the simple people of the fortress more effectively than all the military victories that could be scored.

The first fires were visible to the north-east. Hawkshead, the furthest east of the fortress’ communities was put to the torch before morning creased the sky, and the last watch saw the town burn, just two leagues from the walls.

Just as the sun began to cast forth a ruddy light, Kentmere went up to the west. By then, the walls of the fortress were lined in farm folk. Then Abbington.

Mag watched her town burn. From this high, she could count roofs and she knew when her own cottage burned. She watched it with a desperate anger until she could no longer see which house was hers. They were all afire – every cottage, every house, every stone barn, every chicken coop. The fields around the fortress ridge were suddenly full of the enemy – all the creatures who hadn’t shown themselves in the first days. There were boglins, and irks; daemons and trolls, great things like giants with smooth heads and tusks which the soldiers told her were behemoths. And, of course, men.

How she hated the men.

The enemy was now girdling every tree. Orchards of apple trees and pears, of peaches and persimmons, were being destroyed. Vines that had grown for generations were gone in an hour, their roots destroyed or seared by fire, and every structure was burning. As far as the eye could see, in every direction, there was a sea of fire and Lissen Carak a dark island in it.

Mag couldn’t take her eyes away from the death of her world.

‘Sausage without mustard, eh?’ said a heavy voice at her elbow.

She started, turned to find the giant black-headed hillman, the company’s savage, sitting on the other barrel beside her, watching over the wall.

‘War without fire is like sausage without mustard,’ he said.

She found herself angry at him. ‘That’s – my village. My house!’

The big man nodded. He seemed not to know she was crying. ‘Stands to reason. I’d hae’ done the same, in his place.’

She turned on him. ‘War! In his place? This isn’t a game! We live here! This is our land. We farm here. We bury our dead here. My husband lies out there – my daughter-’ The tears became too much for her, but in that moment, she hated him more than she hated the boglins and their horrible faces and their willingness to burn her life away.

Tom looked hard at her. ‘Not yours unless you can hold it,’ he said. ‘Way I hear it, your people took it from them. Eh? Melike, their dead are buried there too. And right now, I’d say it was theirs. I’m sorry, goodwife, but war is my business. And war involves a lot of fire. He’s showing us that we only hold what we stand on – that he can win without taking the fortress. We hurt him last night and now he strikes back. That’s war. If you don’t want to have your farm burned, you had better be strong – stronger than you were.’

She struck him, then – a glancing blow, pure anger without force.

He let her do it.

‘Not many folk can say they’ve struck Bad Tom and lived to tell the tale,’ he said. He flashed a crooked smile in the early morning light, and she turned and fled.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn watched the farms burn with no great satisfaction. It was a cheap victory, but it would help break the will of the farmers to resist him.

He shrugged inwardly. Or it would harden their resolve to fight to the end. Now they had nothing to save but themselves, and even when he’d been a man, he’d had trouble understanding men. And, increasingly, he felt this contest was too complex for even his intellect. He had made himself the Captain of the Wild, and yet his own interests were scarcely engaged, here. He was far more interested in the puzzle that was the dark sun, and in her, then he was in the prosecution of the siege.

He wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing here, and how he’d ended up so committed to this action that he was willing to risk himself in combat. Last night he’d taken his invincible new form out onto the field, and the fortress had hurt him. None of the blows he had taken were deadly, but he felt the pain of his exertions and their blows. The pain had angered him, and in anger he had unleashed some of his carefully hoarded power – enough to damage the fabric of the fortress. It had impressed his allies, but the cost-

Again, he rustled his leaves in what would have been a shrug, in a man.

Last night, he had felt the breath of mortality for the first time in twenty years. He didn’t like the smell of it. Or the pain.

But as the siege continued it was becoming a rallying point for the Wild in the North Country, and despite minor set-backs, more and more creatures were coming in. His prestige was increasing, and that prestige would directly affect a rise in his power.

None of which would matter if he were dead.

He thought of her.

He could no longer shake his head – it was now a continuous armoured growth from his neck, and he had to pivot around the waist to look to the left and right. But he made an odd clucking sound as he considered her. She had attempted to hurt him directly, last night.

And finally, he considered the third presence in the fortress besides the dark sun. Power – cold, blue power – had struck him. Pure power, untrammelled by doubt or youth. Trained and honed, like fine steel.

It was his apprentice, of course. Had Thorn been able to smile, he would have.

Harmodius.

There was a solvable problem.

Lissen Carak – Amicia

Amicia stood on the wall watching the world burn. She didn’t notice him until he was at her shoulder.

‘It was a matter of time,’ he said, as if they had been in conversation all morning.

She wasn’t sure, in truth, if she wanted to say anything. She didn’t want to look at him – didn’t want him to see how committed she was, or how angry.

‘He has to show his allies that he is making progress.’ The captain leaned on the crenellation and pointed to the western edge of the woods. ‘His men are building a pair of trebuchets. Before the end of the day, we’ll be feeling their power. Not because it will actually help him win, but because it will make his allies see him as-’

If she kept listening to him she would . . .

She turned on her heel and walked away.

He hurried to catch up to her.

‘People are watching,’ she hissed. ‘I am a novice in this convent. I am not your lover. Let me go, please.’

‘Why?’ he asked. He seized her arm in a steel grip. He was hurting her.

‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘Or you are no knight.’

‘Then I am no knight. Why? Why change your mind so suddenly?’ He leaned towards her. ‘I have not changed mine.’

She hadn’t meant to have a conversation. She bit her lip, and looked around for a miracle. Sister Miram. The Abbess. ‘Don’t you have to do something? Save somebody? Give orders?’ she asked. ‘Why not go and save the farms?’

‘That’s unfair!’ he said. and let go of her arm. ‘No one is watching us. I would know.’ He shrugged. ‘I cannot save the farms. And I’d rather be here, with you.’

‘You want me to have that on my soul, as well? That in addition to breaking my vows, I am endangering the fortress?’

He smiled his wicked smile. ‘It’s worked on other girls,’ he said.

‘I imagine it works all the time.’ She put her chin as high as she could manage. ‘I do not choose to be your whore, Captain. I don’t even know your name. Girls like me don’t get to know the names of the great lords who try to put their knees between our legs, do we? But I am choosing to say no. You are not afraid of Jesus, and you are not afraid of the Abbess. So I cannot appeal to you along those lines. But By God, messire, I can protect myself. If you lay a hand on me again, I will hit you hard.’

He looked at her.

He had tears in his eyes, and she hesitated. But she’d made her decision, and she carried it through. She walked away, and didn’t look back.

It was difficult for her to decide why she was so angry. It was difficult for her to say – even to herself – why she was choosing to walk away. But he was not for her, despite the feeling that her very soul was screaming as she walked down the steps.

Despite the look, like agony, on his face.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius

He couldn’t shut it out. Once two entities of power are linked, the link is forever. He couldn’t shut Thorn out, but he could wall him off.

Harmodius

That is, he could mostly wall him off.

Harmodius was sitting cross-legged under an ancient apple tree that stood alone on the battlements, in a stone circle. It was a beautiful thing, in full flower, and it was redolent with power. The seat under it was placed to absorb the power that flowed, as if from a well or a spring, around the place. Somewhere just under his feet, was the well spring. It appeared neither green nor golden. It merely was.

Harmodius drank as deeply as he dared.

Harmodius

Would it really hurt to talk to his former master?

It was dangerous. If he opened the link, Thorn might try to overwhelm him with raw power.

But sitting here, on the bench by the apple tree, he didn’t think Thorn could take him before he could close the link. He wasn’t like the boy. The boy-

To hell with it.

Hello Richard.

I knew you would respond.

It must be satisfying to be right all the time.

Don’t be snide, Harmodius. You hurt me, last night. You have grown very powerful.

I killed your mortal body at Chevin, old man.

Yes. But I knew how to deal with that. And I out-subtled myself, of course. There was a suggestion of smugness. How was my world of mirrors, boy?

Harmodius thought for a moment. Very subtle, you bastard. How did you bind the spirits to the cats?

So nice to discourse with someone intelligent. You learned to leave your body then? Ahh! I see you have not. Interesting.

Harmodius didn’t think he could damage his cause by honesty. No more than by having any contact with Thorn. Why are you fighting here? he asked. Must it be war?

Harmodius! How unlike you! You wish to negotiate with the power of evil? I thought that you had chosen a different path.

I have come to realise that there is nothing intrinsically evil about the Wild. Or good about the Sun.

Ahh. Thorn gave a suggestion of great pleasure. You have learned much, then.

I am still struggling with the concept Harmodius admitted.

The Wild is far more powerful. Men are doomed. They have no role to play in the future. Too fragmented. Too weak.

That’s not how I see it Harmodius shot back. From where I sit, it is the Wild who is losing.

You delude yourself.

Not as effectively as you deluded me.

Let me make it up to you with knowledge. Look. This is how you can possess anybody you choose. And here – this is how to build your own body. See? I give you this knowledge freely. Come. Be a god. You are worthy. And I’m bored-

Harmodius laughed aloud. Bored of monsters and pining for decent company? You betrayed your king and all of humanity, you piece of shit. As swiftly as he could, with all the borrowed power of the well, he slammed the link closed.

He sat back against the bole of the tree and examined the conversation.

‘I think that went well,’ he said aloud.

But Thorn had planted something in him, a seed in damp soil. It was like finding a beautifully wrapped package on your doorstep.

He put the packages in a room in his memory palace, and he carefully walled that room off from his consciousness. He twinned off a second self to remain in the room.

The second self opened the first package. A third self stood ready with an axe.

The phantasm was heartbreakingly beautiful. Thorn had been a great magus, of course.

Harmodius allowed his second self to subsume himself in the complexities of the working.

He shut down the room, withdrew his second self, and sat in another created room in his memory palace, a comfortable room with a circle of armchairs. His second self sat in another, wrote the phantasms out in longhand, and they discussed them in detail. His third self stood behind the second with an axe.

Suddenly he understood how the cats had been used.

He understood how his former master was using animals to watch the fortress.

He understood how he could possess the body of any creature he wanted, unless they had the power to resist him. How he could subsume their essence – in effect, eat that part of a mortal that Harmodius thought of as the soul.

For power.

And take the mortal body for his own, or make one.

Harmodius let the knowledge roll around inside his head for a little. And found himself watching a mongrel dog – one of the mercenaries had brought the animal into Lissen Carak – rooting in the midden heap that was beginning to fill the courtyard. Eventually, the dog would be eaten, if the siege went on.

I could just try it on the dog.

The dog is going to die, anyway.

The dog turned and looked at Harmodius. She tilted her head to one side, watching to see if the man had anything interesting to offer.

Power poured out around him. No wonder the creatures of the Wild want this place back, Harmodius thought. He reached out to the power, took a taste, and ran it through the phantasm-

And made a motion of negation with his hands, cancelling the working and draining the power into the walls of the fortress.

He got to his feet and grinned at the dog. ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere,’ he said aloud.

He did that on purpose, the subtle bastard. He’s inviting me to fall.

Harmodius could smell breakfast, and he decided he needed to be with people.

East of Albinkirk- Ranald

Ranald was tired, and he wept a great deal. He wasted an afternoon trying to catch a horse. At every step, he expected to find the drag, the rear guard, or another survivor. But he saw no one.

He wasted more time at the edge of the battlefield, trying to find his pack.

Eventually he gave up and walked, wet when it rained, scorched when the sun shone. He had nothing to cook with, nothing to eat, and no means of acquiring food

On the evening of the fourth day after the fight, he walked up the lane to the great Inn. Men shouted when they saw him.

Every man and woman in the dale came running, when they knew whom he was. And because he was his cousin’s tanist, they thought, at first, that his appearance must bode well.

But when they came closer, they saw the tracks of his tears, and the sword. And they knew.

By the time he walked the last few paces to the porch of the great Inn, the Keeper alone barred his way, and he was grim-faced. ‘Greetings, Ranald Lachlan,’ he said. ‘Tell me how many were lost?’

Ranald had no trouble meeting the Keeper’s eye. Death made you less careful of such things.

‘They’re all dead,’ he said. ‘Every man of us. I, too, was dead.’

They gasped, the folk of the Dale, and then the tears began, and the wail of loss, the roar of rage.

Ranald Lachlan told his story quickly, and without embellishment. And then he turned to the weeping woman who stood by her father. ‘Here’s his sword,’ Ranald said. ‘If you bear him a son, he says the boy is to avenge him.’

‘That’s a heavy load to lay on an unborn bairn’s shoulders,’ the Keeper said.

Ranald shrugged. ‘It’s not my choice,’ he said wearily.

Later, he sat in the Keeper’s own rooms, and told the story of the last fight. Hector’s wife listened through her tears. And when he was done, she looked at him long, and mean.

‘Why’d they send you back, then?’ she spat. ‘When they might have sent my love?’

Ranald shrugged.

The Keeper shook his head. ‘Too many men lost, along with the whole herd.’ He put his chin in his hand. ‘I’ll be hard pressed if they turn on the Dale.’

Ranald didn’t even pretend to be interested. And the Keeper let him go.

He was not interested when the men in the Inn offered him ale.

He wasn’t interested when the woman of the Inn offered themselves, nor when a travelling player offered to make a song of the battle.

He slept, and the next day he was just as numb as he had been the day before, and the day before that. But he went down from his room to the common room at dawn, and there he faced the Keeper and asked for a horse and gear.

‘You can’t mean to go fight the Outwallers all by yourself,’ the Keeper said, gruffly.

‘No,’ Ranald said.

‘You mean to just ride home?’ the Keeper asked, incredulous.

‘I’m a drover,’ Ranald said. ‘I have no home.’

The Keeper drank some small beer and wiped his moustache. ‘Where, then?’ he asked.

Ranald sat back. ‘I’m going to find the Wyrm of Erch,’ he said. ‘I mean to ask why he allowed us to be attacked by the Wild.’ The drover shrugged. ‘We pay a tithe to the Wyrm in exchange for protection from the Wild. It’s the Law of Erch. Eh? Ancient as the oaks and all.’

The Keeper put his beer down slowly. ‘You mean to speak to the Wyrm?’

‘Someone has to,’ Ranald said. ‘I might as well; I’m already dead.’

The Keeper shook his head. ‘I have just a dozen horses left. Your cousin took my herd.’

Ranald nodded. ‘I mean to remedy that first, before I go to the Wyrm. Give me twenty men and I’ll bring in the herd. There’s a lot of it left. A thousand head at least.’

‘You are like your cousin,’ the Keeper said. ‘Always a sting in the tail.’

Ranald shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t bother, but Sarah’s boy will need those beasts, if he means to be a drover.’ He didn’t say the other thing that was on his mind. That he was a King’s Man, and he owed the king a warning of the Wild.

That afternoon, with twenty wary men, he rode south.

They rode quickly, spread in pairs over a mile of ground, scouting every hummock and every stand of trees.

They made a cold camp and Ranald ate the oatcakes that Sarah had given him, and when the sun was a red disc on the edge of the world they rode on.

By noon they found the first beasts. The Dalemen were spooked, terrified of the Sossag, and afraid, too, to find corpses grinning at death in the woods, but they were still, by Ranald’s reckoning, miles north of the battleground. The herd had turned and headed home, as animals will do.

Ranald swept south along the road, and before darkness he found the boy that Hector had sent back as a messenger. He was dead, and he’d either been lost or he’d ridden a long way west to get around something. He lay on his face, a cloud of flies around his bloated corpse, and his horse was still standing nearby. The boy had four arrows in him, and it was clear he’d died trying to fulfil his mission. The Dalemen buried him with love and honour and his cousins, two tall, grey-eyed boys, wept for him.

But the next day held the greatest shock.

They were well west of the fight, collecting animals hard against the great Swamp, and Ranald scented a fire and went to scout it himself. It was a foolish risk to take, but he couldn’t bear to be the cause of any more Dalemen’s deaths.

What he found was the drag – twenty of Hector’s men, alive, with a third of the herd. Donald Redmane had led them west, and they had fought three times against scattered Outwaller bands, but they had lived and kept a great deal of the herd together.

Ranald had to tell the story all over again, and Donald Redmane wept. But the rest of the men in the drag swore a great oath to avenge Hector Lachlan.

Donald took Ranald aside. ‘You fought in the south,’ he said. ‘You think Tom is still alive?’

‘Hector’s brother Tom?’ Ranald said. ‘Aye. Unless the red hand of war has taken him, he’ll be alive. On the Continent or in the East, I reckon. Why?’

Donald Redmane’s eyes were red. ‘Because he’s the Drover, now,’ the older man said.

‘He won’t want it,’ Ranald said.

‘He will if it means he can make war,’ Donald pointed out.

The next morning, scouts killed a strange creature – shaped like a man, short like a tall child, with heavily muscled arms and legs like thick ropes and a misshapen head like a man’s but heavier. Ranald had to assume the beast was an irk, a creature somewhere between myth and reality to the men of the hills. Legend said irks, like boglins, came from the deep woods far to the west.

Ranald made camp with the whole band – forty-four men. They had more than twelve hundred head of cattle, and all of the goats. Seventy-five head of horses. Sarah Lachlan would not be a pauper, and the clan was not dead.

Hector Lachlan was gone.

But Lachlan was for Aa.

The Albin River, South of Albinkirk – The Queen

The Queen watched the banks go by and she smiled at a young guildsman with a crossbow who crouched behind the boat’s high sides, watching the banks. In truth, he wasn’t really watching them. He was of an age where he was conscious of nothing but Desiderata a few feet away. His eyes flicked to her over and over.

She watched the banks and smiled inwardly. The rowers chanted, on and on, and the mosquitoes descended on them in swarms unless a breeze rose upriver.

Lady Almspend lay next to her in the bow, a wax tablet open across her lap and a stylus ready to hand. ‘Another letter?’ she asked somewhat languorously.

The Queen shook her head. ‘It’s too hot.’

‘Pity the poor rowers,’ Lady Almspend answered. She turned her head. Most of them rowed naked to the waist – a few more naked even then that. Their work left them, to a man, with magnificent physiques, and Lady Almspend considered them carefully. ‘They are like the Archaics,’ she said. ‘I withdraw my former statement. I don’t think they are to be pitied, but rather admired.’ She smiled at one in particular, and he smiled back even as he brought his sixteen-foot oar through the end of its sweep and brought it back to the top of its arc.

The Queen smiled. ‘Do have a care, my dear,’ she said.

‘I will only admire from afar,’ Lady Almspend said. ‘Do you think the sentries really saw a boglin in the night?’

The Queen nodded. ‘Indeed, I’m quite sure of it.’ She was not going to enlighten her secretary any further, but the banks were already dangerous, and the boats were now using islands in the river for camps.

‘Could we not arm the rowers?’ Lady Almspend asked.

‘They have weapons; javelins and swords,’ the Queen answered. ‘But against a sudden onslaught in the dark, we’re safest behind a wall of water.’

Lady Almspend shook her head. ‘I cannot imagine what has happened, for the North to be so utterly over run. The king must have his work cut out for him. When will we be at Albinkirk?’

‘Tomorrow mid-day, at this pace,’ said Almspend. ‘If the Queen could wear even less, the rowers might row even harder.’

Desiderata grinned at her friend. ‘I aim to row through the night,’ she said. ‘The river remains broad, and we are late.’

Lady Mary looked at her oddly. ‘Have you had a message?’ she asked.

The Queen shook her head. ‘I have a feeling,’ she admitted,’ nothing more. If the king has made any pace at all, he’ll already be gone west, towards Lissen Carak.’ The Queen lay back, feeling the summer sun on her shoulders. The bugs never troubled her. ‘Send a message to the king, Becca. Tell him how close we are,’ She batted her eyelashes at the rowers closest to her. ‘Tell him we can be with him in three days.’

Royer Le Hardi volunteered, and they put him ashore with his horse and a spare. He received a kiss from the Queen, and he was still red as a beet when he rode west.

Albinkirk – Gaston

Gaston watched the Royal Army break camp and turn west with something very like trepidation. None of the military orders knights had returned, despite Lissen Carak being only two days’ march west of Albinkirk. Each night, light rippled in the western sky.

Whatever they were fighting was utterly alien. The boglins had startled him at Albinkirk – even a few of them, they were so ugly and so very wrong. He wanted to call them unnatural, except that they were spawned by the Wild.

His cousin was ecstatic – the flashes of light in the west guaranteed that the castle there still held, and that meant that battle was at last imminent. For Jean de Vrailly, that battle had become the guiding force – the lodestone on which his life turned.

Gaston inspected his company and reminded them, for the tenth day in a row, of the lessons they’d learned from the Count of the Borders. To always have scouts – front, flanks, and rear. To ride with the knights inside a strong box of spearmen and bowmen, so that, in case of an ambush, the knights could react instantly, from safety. To put the wagons at the very centre of that box.

All good sense. But it required a reliance on the low-born men by the knights.

His scouts rode off into the pre-dawn and he mounted his charger. His squire handed him his weapons and then he sat quietly watching the column form, and waiting for the sound – the shouts, the trumpets – that would signal a fight.

Once again, he felt homesick. He wanted no part of this strange warfare against fabulous beasts and monsters. At home, he fought men. He understood men.

When his company was formed with his cousin’s he rode west along the column to the king, who sat mounted amidst a circle of his lords. He had a scroll in his hand, as he did most mornings – the Kings of Alba had a fine express service, and its riders continued to reach him despite the increasingly dangerous roads.

‘She’s ignored me,’ The king said happily. He looked up, and greeted the captal with a nod. ‘My wife has ignored my advice and is on her way here,’ he said.

The captal, as usual, mistook his meaning. ‘Then I suppose your Majesty must punish her,’ he said.

The king chose not to take exception, and instead, smiled. ‘I think we would be most ungrateful,’ he said, ‘to be rude to a lady who brings us a great supply of food.’

The Count of the Borders smiled. ‘When do you expect her?’

The king looked out over the woods that stretched like a sea of green to the west. ‘She’s three days’ march to the south of Albinkirk,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘But she’s commandeered a flotilla of boats – she’s moving much faster than we are.’

‘But she has to follow the snake of the river,’ said the Count of the Borders.

Sir Ricar Fitzroy fingered his beard. ‘You Grace, she’s got a head on her shoulders. She’ll still be faster, and she’ll carry a great deal more food and fodder than a wagon convoy.’

The constable sat back on his charger and put a fist in the small of his back. ‘Am I the only man who thinks he’s too old for all this?’ he said. ‘Your Grace, I propose that we fall back along the line of the river until we link with the Queen. We only have five days’ rations – we’re short on meat already, and the woods are scoured of animals. The Royal Huntsmen – begging your Grace’s pardon – aren’t bringing in enough game to feed the Royal Household.’

The Count of the Borders agreed. ‘No need to rush to a fight,’ he said. ‘Not with the Wild.’

The Earl of Towbray shook his head. ‘The fortress could fall,’ he said.

‘Lissen Carak will stand or fall,’ the constable said. He looked around, and lowered his voice. ‘My lords, we carry the weight of the kingdom on our shoulders. If we lose this army there is no new army to replace it.’

‘Albinkirk is all but in cinders,’ the king answered. ‘I will not lose the Fortress of the North, as well.’

‘We need food,’ the constable argued. ‘We planned to resupply from the magazine at Albinkirk. Or to find the drove coming south from the Hills and buy their beef.’

‘Can we last five days?’ the king said. ‘And how long can the fortress last?’

Jean de Vrailly rose in his stirrups. ‘Bah,’ he said. ‘The men can last without food. Let us find the enemy,’ he said.

The Albins looked at him wearily.

‘Let us finally face these creatures!’ the captal insisted.

The Lord of Bain didn’t comment. He merely raised an eyebrow.

The king’s friend, Ser Driant, scowled. ‘I’m not the hardiest warrior, and I’m well known to these gentlemen as a lover of my dram.’ He leaned forward towards the captal. ‘But we are not going to risk the king’s host on a battle where we have unfed horses.’

Jean de Vrailly sneered. ‘Of course, you must be cautious,’ he said.

The constable narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, my lord. That is exactly what we must be. We must be cautious. We must fight on ground of our choosing, with a well-ordered host in tight array, with secure flanks and a defensible camp to which we can retreat if it all goes awry. We must take every possible advantage over our foes. This is not a game, nor a tournament, my lord. This is war.’

‘You lecture me?’ Jean de Vrailly allowed his charger to take two heavy-footed steps toward the constable.

The constable raised an eyebrow. ‘I do, my lord. You seem to need it.’

The king nodded. ‘The captal’s willingness to go forward is noted, but I sense my constable would rather dig in here and wait for the Queen. Is that your thought?’

The constable nodded. ‘It is. I expect to hear from the Prior in the next day. It would be foolish to move forward without word from our most trusted knights.’

Jean de Vrailly’s anger was palpable.

Gaston put a hand on his arm and his head snapped around like a falcon’s.

Gaston met his wild gaze.

‘And let us at least travel south of the river. Our best information places the enemy on the north bank.’ The constable was openly begging the king to take these measures, and Gaston felt for him.

The captal made a grunt of contempt for such precautions. ‘If the enemy is on the north bank,’ he said with patronising and deliberate offence, ‘surely it is our duty as knights to be on the north bank to contend with them?’

But there were quite a few nods of agreement in favour of the south bank, so the king smiled gracefully at the Galle and turned to his knights. ‘We cross back to the south bank,’ he said. ‘It is my will. We will encamp and dig a fortification on the south bank of the Cohocton, and throw out a heavy screen of prickers and pedites.’

‘So cautious,’ de Vrailly spat.

‘It is my will,’ the king said. He didn’t lose his smile.

Gaston had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Lissen Carak – Michael

Michael sat and wrote by strong afternoon light.

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Ten.

Yesterday the enemy destroyed all the villages west of Albinkirk by fire and sword. We were forced to watch. Today, the enemy fills his siege lines with monsters and overhead his foul creatures fill the air with their cries. When more than two of them are over the fortress, it is as if they darken the sky. And it has disheartened many of the people to see how many our enemies really are. They are literally uncountable. All our efforts to kill them now seem like the efforts of a man with a shovel to move a mountain.

The captain was tireless today, moving from point to point around the fortress. Our people began to build an artillery platform in the ruins of the Onager Tower. He and Lord Harmodius helped the workmen lay stones in new cement and then worked the cement so that it dried faster – a great miracle, and one that did much to encourage the people.

Now it is the middle of the afternoon. The enemy had set engines of war to work, but their stones could not even reach the fortress, and we watched them sail uselessly through the air and land well short of our walls – indeed, one killed a creature of the Wild out in the fields. The captain says that the spirit of resistance can be fuelled by things as small as this.

But an hour ago, using his thousands of slaves, the enemy rebuilt his engines closer to us.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

‘He’s going to have a go at the Lower Town,’ Jehannes said.

The captain was staring out, watching the distant engines as they were cranked back. The enemy had two trebuchets built about four hundred paces from the Lower Town’s walls, on a timber and earth mound almost forty feet tall. The speed with which they had built the siege mound had been, for the captain, the most horrifying moment of the siege.

Perhaps not quite the most horrifying. I am not your lover.

It was ironic that Harmodius was training him to divide himself, to rule himself, to wall off dangerous elements of spells and counter-spells. He had issued his new apprentice an absolute injunction.

‘Never use this power on your emotions, boy. Our humanity is all we have.’ The old man had told him that this morning, as if it was a matter of great moment.

The captain had used his new talent to wall off his emotions almost the moment Harmodius left. The Mage wasn’t attempting to prosecute a siege while feeling as if his leg had been ripped off by daemons.

Why?

Clearly his control needed work.

He settled back into the crenellations as a rock struck one of the Lower Town gate-towers squarely. The tower shrugged off the hit.

The captain breathed.

‘We have men down there,’ Jehannes said. ‘We can’t hold it.’

‘We have to,’ the captain said. ‘If we lose the Lower Town, he’s cut us off from the Bridge Castle. Then he shifts his batteries south. It’s like chess, Jehannes. He is playing for the ground just there,’ the captain pointed at a set of sheepfolds to the south and to the west. ‘If he can build a siege mound there, and put his engines there, he can destroy the Bridge Castle one tower at a time.’

Jehannes shook his head. He was a veteran of twenty sieges, and he clearly hated it when the captain talked down to him. ‘He can build there any time he likes,’ Jehannes snarled.

The captain sighed. ‘No, Jehannes. He cannot. Because he fears our sorties. Despite his immense power and force, we’ve stung him. If he places engines there without killing the Lower Town, we can sortie out and burn his engines.’

‘He can build more. In a day.’ Jehannes was dismissive.

The captain considered this.

Jehannes bored in. ‘He has limitless muscle power and wood. Probably metal, as well. He can build a hundred engines, in ten different places.’

The captain nodded. ‘Yes he can, but not if his creatures desert him,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t want us to win any more victories.’

‘Why should he care?’ Jehannes said bitterly.

The captain was watching a party of novices going into the hospital, to take their turn at duty.

‘Why, Jehannes!’ the captain said. His eyes flashed, and his bitterness was evident. ‘I thought that you believed that God was on our side.’

She hadn’t so much as glanced at him as she passed.

Jehannes made a fist. ‘Your blasphemy is an offence,’ he said quietly.

The captain whirled at his marshal. ‘Make of it what you will,’ he said.

They were standing, their eyes locked, when a third trebuchet went into action, and they heard the sound of the northern gate tower in the Lower Town collapsing.

‘You need to pull those men out of the Lower Town,’ Jehannes said.

‘No. I will reinforce them. And I’ll lead them myself. Who has the Lower Town today? Atcourt?’

‘Atcourt is still injured. It’s Ser George Brewes.’ Jehannes looked out over the walls. ‘We’re losing too many men,’ he said.

‘We’re stronger than when we started the siege.’ The captain was bottling his anger and storing it out of reach.

‘It’s time you looked around,’ Jehannes said. ‘We have bitten off far more than we can chew. We cannot win this.’

The captain turned back to his senior marshal. ‘Yes, we can.’

Jehannes shook his head. ‘This isn’t a time for boyish enthusiasm-’

The captain nodded. ‘You overstep yourself, Ser Jehannes. Go to your duty.’

Jehannes continued ‘-or chivalric daring-do. There are two realistic options-’

‘And when you are captain, you can act that way,’ the captain went on. ‘But let me be as blunt as you seem to be, messire. You can’t see the simplest tactical consequence. You play favourites among the archers and the knights. You lack the birth to command men who prize such things. Most of all you don’t have power, and I do. So I’m bored with explaining everything to you, messire. Obey. That is all I ask of you. If you cannot, then I will dismiss you.’

Jehannes crossed his arms. ‘In the middle of a desperate siege.’

The captain’s mouth formed a hard line. ‘Yes.’

They stared at each other.

By nightfall, the enemy had six engines throwing rocks into the Lower Town.

The captain collected the relief watch and headed down the slope towards it. There were two routes – the road, which wound in multiple cutbacks down the face of the ridge, and the path, which went straight down the spine of the ridge and had two sets of stairs. Several portions of the path were walled and covered to protect parties going to the Lower Town but, of course, you couldn’t take a horse down the path.

The watch took the path anyway, their feet wrapped in rags to be as noiseless as possible. Given the enemy’s dominance of the plain below them, the captain put out scouts to either side of their route – Daud the Red and Amy’s Hob were moving carefully down the bare rock.

It took them an hour to make their way down the ridge. All the while, great rocks fell from the sky on the Lower Town, destroying houses and cracking the cobbles. Sparks flew as each mass of flint struck the town. The heavy thump-snap of the trebuchets sounded every few heartbeats, so clear in the smoky air that the engines seemed near at hand.

The air was acrid and heavy. Burning barns and roofs on a damp day had saturated the air with smoke.

An archer coughed.

They crept on. No stars showed and the darkness had become a palpable thing, an immortal enemy. The choking smoke was far worse down on the plain, and the rocks were raising dust and stone grit with every strike to add to the difficulties.

Far out on the plain, one of the engines loosed its burden. As it rose in a graceful arc, it could be seen dully – it was burning. Its misty appearance showed just how dense the smoke was.

The burning mass seemed to come right at them.

‘Come on,’ the captain said, ignoring it. ‘Follow me.’

The fire crashed to earth out in the fields.

Another engine loosed.

Even the vague light of the burning missiles was enough to help the relief watch move down the path.

The captain launched into a stumbling run. His sabatons rang on the stone steps as he came to the postern gate.

Link, Blade, Snot, and Hetty caught him up.

‘Relief watch!’ he called softly.

There was no answer.

‘Fuck,’ the captain said softly. ‘RELIEF WATCH!’ he called.

‘Dead,’ said Kanny, softly. ‘We should go-’

‘Shut up,’ Blade said. ‘Cap’n, you want me to climb the wall?’

The captain was reaching into the postern with his power.

It was unmanned.

‘Help him up the wall. Kanny, make a bucket. Then onto my shoulders. Stand on my helmet if you have to.’ The captain stood next to Kanny, who grumbled but made a stirrup with his gauntleted hands.

Blade stepped up into Kanny’s hands, and then onto the captain’s shoulders. The captain felt a shift of weight, and then the man jumped.

Above him, the archer grunted, swinging from his arms. But on the third swing, he pulled powerfully and got one leg over the lowest part of the wall. And then he was in.

‘Garn, that was too easy,’ Kanny said.

Snot blew his nose quietly. ‘You are a useless fuck,’ he said. ‘We used to take towns in Galle this way.’

Blade opened the postern. ‘No one here,’ he said.

A rock crashed into the wall, far too close, and all of them had to clamber back to their feet.

‘In,’ the captain said. He rolled in through the low postern gate, and drew his sword. Daud the Red appeared at the wall with Amy’s Hob and No Head. ‘Get in here. Daud – you and Hob take the postern in case we have to come back through.’

The two huntsmen nodded.

Moving across the Lower Town was a new nightmare. Rocks hit the wall – once, an overcast hit a house less than a street away. The streets were already full of rubble, and all of them closed their visors against the rock chips and wood splinters. They fell frequently and cursed too loudly when the did.

The sky was lightening when the relief watch made it to the northern gate tower. It had taken several direct hits, but the massive fortification was fifteen feet thick at the base and had so far survived.

The captain hammered at the lower door with the pommel of his sword.

It took time for a terrified pair of eyes to appear at the grille.

‘Watch!’ the captain hissed. ‘We’ve come to relieve you.’

They heard the bar lifted.

A big stone hit, somewhere to their right, and they all cringed. Stone chips rang off the captain’s helmet.

Blade began to pant.

The captain looked back at him – then reached to catch him as he slumped to the ground, a four-inch wood splinter in his neck. Before the captain could lower him to the ground, he was dead.

‘Get the door open,’ the captain roared.

The door opened outward a handspan and stopped. It was jammed by rubble.

Two more rocks struck nearby, and then a ball of fire struck fifty paces away, illuminating the smoky air.

No Head got enough of the rubble off the doorsill to get it open and they piled into the tower, dragging Blade.

Scrant, just inside the doorway, flinched at the look in the captain’s eye.

The captain pushed the archer out of the way and stalked along the low corridor. Outside, another rock struck, and the tower gave a low vibration – torches moved in their brackets, and plaster came off the walls.

Ser George Brewes was sitting in a chair in the donjon. He had a cup of wine in his hand. He looked blearily at the captain.

‘Are you drunk? Why wasn’t the postern manned?’ The captain turned to No Head. ‘Round up the off-going watch. Ser George will be staying.’

Kanny lingered in the doorway of the donjon, clearly interested in listening, and No Head grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Move your arse,’ he said.

Kanny could be heard grumbling all the way up the stairs.

Ser George waited until the archers were gone. ‘This can’t be held,’ he said. The effect of his statement was largely ruined by a belch. ‘It’s not tenable,’ he said, as if his careful pronouncement would settle everything.

‘So you thought you’d leave the oncoming watch hanging out to dry?’ the captain said.

‘Fuck you and your righteousness,’ Ser George said. ‘I’ve had a bellyful. It’s time someone told you what a posturing arse you are. I pulled my men into the tower to keep them alive. You got here anyway. I was sure someone would. I haven’t lost a fucking man., and if I’m drunk, that’s no one’s business but mine.’ He snorted. ‘You were outside. It’s hell out there.’

The captain leaned over. ‘If we abandon the Lower Town, he’ll take the Bridge Castle in a day.’

Ser George shook his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You’re playing at being a knight errant – is that because you’re doing a nun?’ he guffawed.

The captain could smell the liquor on the man’s breath. The sweet cloying smell of wine and hate. Just for a moment, he thought of his mother.

‘We’re mercenaries, not heroes. It’s time to find whoever is behind this siege and cut him a deal. Take your girlfriend with us, if that’s what it takes. We’re done here. And there’s no money in the world that would make it worth dying here.’ Ser George hawked and spat. ‘Now get out of my way, Captain. I’ve done my twelve hours in hell and I’m going back up to the fortress.’

The captain stood up straight. ‘No. You’re going to stay right here, with me.’

‘Like hell I am,’ Ser George said.

‘If you try to leave this room. I’ll kill you,’ the captain said.

Ser George made a plunge for the door.

He wasn’t in his full harness and he had a good deal of wine in his belly. In a moment, he was kneeling at the captain’s feet, with his arm in a lock that threatened to dislocate his shoulder.

‘I don’t want to kill you,’ the captain said. ‘But to be honest, Ser George, I’d really like to kill someone, and you are the likeliest candidate right now.’

Ser George grunted.

The captain let go his hold, a little at a time.

Ser George backed away. ‘You’re mad as a hatter.’

The captain shrugged. ‘I am going to hold this fortress to the bitter end,’ he said. ‘I’m going to hold it if I have to do it by myself. When we march away from Lissen Carak – and by my power, Ser George, we will march away – we won’t be a nameless company of broken men on the edge of banditry. We will be the most famous company of soldiers in the North Country, and men will bid to have us.’

Ser George rubbed his shoulder. ‘We’re going to die her, and that’s not what we do, boy. We live. Let the other bastard do the dying.’ He looked at the captain. ‘You have a very persuasive way with an arm lock.’

Two rocks struck close together. Slam – slam, and plaster rained down on their heads.

The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

An hour later, as the light began to grow outside, the off-going watch started up the path with two heavy beams – the rooftrees from collapsed cots – carried high on their shoulders.

The enemy’s machines launched a flurry of stones but the off-going watch was already out of range. They scurried up the ridge, and men came out of the fortress’s main gate to help.

And then there was silence.

Hours passed.

The captain had been sleeping in his armour, his head down on the table in the donjon. He woke to the silence, and he was up the ladder in a twinkling, his sabatons ringing, his hip armour scraping on the hatch to the first floor of the tower.

No Head was already on the battlements. He pointed to the enemy machines – just three hundred paces further west. Close enough to touch, or so it seemed.

‘Cuddy could reach ’em with an arrow. Or Wilful Murder.’ No Head grinned. ‘I’m tempted to try, myself.’

‘Even if you caught one or two,’ the captain said, ‘there are many, many more of them.’ He was much more exposed here – his Hermetic defences weren’t buttressed by the power of the fortress. He could feel Thorn.

He looked around.

The Lower Town’s curtain wall was breached in four places.

Harmodius he called.

He felt the old man stir.

Well sent. I understand you.

The captain concentrated. There will be an attack on the Lower Town. I need men. Please tell Ser Thomas.

You are stronger.

I am practising sent the captain.

He went back to watching.

Sauce watched the beams come through the gate. Skant came over to her – hollow eyed, rubbing his arms – and handed her a note.

She looked it over and nodded. She had the day watch formed in the courtyard for inspection, and she found Wilful Murder easily. ‘Wilful,’ she said. ‘On me.’

He stepped out of the ranks.

‘Find Bent. And any artificers you can rustle up. Master Random’s man is in the dormitory – I think that the pargeter boy is in the Great Hall. These beams are to form the pivot arm of a trebuchet – mounted where the onager was.’

Wilful Murder digested this. Nodded. Chewed on his moustache.

While he was looking at the tower and Cuddy was inspecting the duty archers, Bad Tom appeared in his armour. He didn’t look like a man who’d been up all night.

‘Captain needs the quarter guard. At the double.’ He nodded.

Ser Jehannes came along the wall and down the curtain steps. ‘Hold hard, Tom.’

Tom’s eyes met Sauce’s. ‘Now,’ he said.

He turned to face Ser Jehannes.

The quarter guard was the watch reserve – half the able men, usually the very best men, but today simply half the available troops. Sauce had more than a dozen men-at-arms in the day watch – most of the rest were kept ready for the sortie – led by Ser John Ansley, a big, cheerful, ruddy-faced young man. ‘Ser John, you have the watch,’ she said. ‘I’m taking the quarter guard. On me!’ she called, and the quarter guard came; sixteen archers and eight men-at-arms. Most of the archers were guildsmen she didn’t know – with all five of the new recruits – the local boys. Ben should have been her master archer, but he was already standing with Wilful Murder.

‘Cuddy – you’re the senior,’ she said.

‘Like enough,’ he said.

Jehannes raised his voice. ‘You are insane!’ he roared at Tom.

Tom laughed.

Her senior man-at-arms was Chrys Foliak – one of her own tent-mates. He had the others ready to move.

Cuddy made a motion with his hand and Long Paw stepped out of the ranks and joined him.

They went out the postern. It was obvious to them all that Ser Jehannes disagreed with the order to send them. But then the courtyard was behind them, and they were out in the light.

Below, on the fields, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of creatures were moving toward the Lower Town. The fields themselves seemed to be moving.

‘Good Christ!’ Chrys Foliack muttered. ‘Good Christ.’

Long Paw spat thoughtfully.

He paused in the postern, leaned back, and shouted ‘Toby! Michael!’

He couldn’t see the captain’s valet or his squire. ‘JACQUES!’ he roared.

A nun – tall and pretty despite her hollow eyes – came to the postern. ‘May I help?’ she asked.

‘Captain’s in trouble. Tell Bad – tell Ser Thomas we’ll need relays of arrows and all the men in harness.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’

‘See you do, lass,’ Long Paw spat carefully to one side, flashed her his best smile, turned, and ran down the long path to catch up with the others.

Lissen Carak – Harmodious

Harmodius watched the bustle in the courtyard as he climbed past the two men-at-arms arguing – reached the wall-

It was worse than he had thought.

He ran, barefoot, along the wall to the apple tree.

Summoned power, and raised his staff . . .

Lissen Carak – The Abbess

The Abbess watched the day watch form under her window. There was something particularly well-ordered about the company. Their scarlet jupons, their bright polished armour. They made her feel safe even when she knew that she was anything but.

Even as she watched – looking for the captain, and missing him, and assigning herself a penance for looking, all in one thought – the woman who wore men’s armour shouted an order, and all of the men on the right of the formation turned and followed her.

There was suddenly an air of crisis – men moved in many directions.

She reached out-

He was preparing an attack.

She felt well-slept and immensely strong. She walked across her solar to the windows on the outer wall, three hundred feet above the fields below, and looked out.

Her fields seethed as if covered in maggots.

Her feeling of revulsion was more than physical.

A pair of her novices, alerted by her movements, appeared with a cup of warm wine and a fur-lined robe. She drank the one and shrugged on the other while the older novice brushed her hair.

‘Hurry,’ she said.

She put light shoes on her feet, pulled the mantle of her profession over her fur robe and was off while the creatures in the fields below were still merely a tide lapping at the foundations, and not a mighty wave.

She collected the crozier – the crooked staff that the Abbess bore by tradition, with a curious green stone head.

And then she ran, like a much younger woman, for her bower – her apple tree.

She was shocked to find another there. Not just there, but swimming in her power.

‘Master Magus,’ she said, coming to a stop.

‘Lady Abbess,’ he said. ‘I’m working.’

Even as she paused, he raised his staff. His power was visible. His whole form gave off tendrils of power.

The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain watched the enemy’s creatures gather. They were well within bowshot, and No Head and his fellows began to pink them. The two youngest archers carried sheaves of fresh shafts from the second floor, and the older men began to loose.

The captain had seen archers in action before, had watched his men practise at the butts, but he’d never watched a dozen professionals at full stretch.

He’d fussed at No Head while the older man felt the breeze, and carefully arranged his sheaves in brackets for the purpose set into the wall – little iron buckets.

The two senior men – No Head and Kanny – raised their bows, loosed, discussed their aiming points, and watched the fall of their shafts.

‘Over,’ said Kanny. It was a different tone of voice from his usual hectoring, barracks-lawyer voice.

‘Over,’ No Head said. ‘Ready, lads?’

He raised his bow, and every man on the tower raised his in emulation, and they all loosed together. Their arrows rose and rose, and before they had begun to fall the next flight was on its way.

Down on the plain, the distant irks screamed their defiance, showed their hooked teeth, patted their backsides and hefted their spears.

There were a thousand of them – more, most likely. In their homespun greens and their leathers and brown skin, they looked as if they’d been grown from the earth under their feet.

The first flight of arrows struck. They all struck together, and tore a small whole in the great patchwork of brown-green irks.

The phalanx of spears moved a step closer.

The second flight struck.

And the third.

And the fourth.

The regiment of irks started to look like a piece of leather on a shoemaker’s bench punched with an awl. And again, and again. The punches only made small holes. But it made a great many of them.

The irks screamed, their handsome elfin faces contorted into masks of rage, and they charged.

‘Fast as you can, boys,’ No Head called.

His arms became a blur of motion. He drew and loosed, took a shaft from his bracket, nocked, drew, and loosed so quickly that the captain had difficulty sorting his actions.

Brat, the youngest archer, opened a linen sack and dumped the shafts, points first, into No Head’s bracket, and ran to load the next archer.

Kanny was grunting with every draw. The sound was so frequent and rhythmic it was obscene.

The irks had little or no armour, and no shields. As they crossed the three hundred paces to the breaches in the northern wall, they left a trail of wounded and dead creatures behind them. It was as if the whole phalanx was a wounded animal, bleeding little corpses.

They reached the first breach.

Kanny ran dry of arrows, and had to pause to get his own bundle. Brat couldn’t keep up. One by one, the bows stopped twanging.

‘They’re not going anywhere,’ No Head said calmly. ‘Don’t rush. Everyone get their quivers full again. Brat, you get one more load up here and join us on the wall.’

The captain felt superfluous.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

Cuddy watched the first charge out of the slits of one of the covered ways halfway up the ridge. Then he ran down the steps to Sauce.

‘They’re going to need help,’ he said.

She glared at him.

‘We can hit them from down there,’ he said, pointing to the lower path. ‘With arrows.’ He continued. The men-at-arms tended to forget the power of the bows.

Sauce paused. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s go!’

They pounded down the track – over a streambed, down steep steps, around a long curve, and then they were right above the Lower Town. The wall had a fine low parapet, and the Gate Tower was just a hundred paces away and almost at eye level.

Cuddy admired No Head’s archery for three long breaths. The shooting was continuous, now, and the flow of shafts like a waterfall crashing down on the irks in the field. The creatures died and died.

It was clear to Cuddy that the irks were defeated. Archery combat had a ruthless logic of its own. Cuddy was an expert in it.

‘Five shafts,’ he said to the men around him. ‘Right in the midst of them. Fast as you can.’ Two of his guildsmen had crossbows – not really worth a thing in a fight like this.

Oh, well.

‘Ready?’ he called. Every longbowman had five arrows in the ground, ready to hand, and another on the bow. Long Paw had one on his bow, one in his bow hand, and four in the ground.

Cuddy raised his bow.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The irks broke.

The new arrows came from behind, plunging down and killing them. In a minute a tenth of their numbers were pinned to the ground, screaming their thin screams.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

‘Save your shafts,’ Cuddy said. He had only fifteen more. High above, on the ridge, he could see valets starting down with bundles of arrows, but it would be ten minutes before those arrows reached them.

He pointed to the town. ‘Some of them got in,’ he called to Sauce.

‘Are you happy to stay here?’ she asked.

Cuddy nodded.

‘Men-at-arms – on me.’ She waved to Cuddy and started for the postern gate.

Long Paw winked at Cuddy as he followed her.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain went to open the tower’s lower door himself. He and Ser George were the only men without bows.

Sauce was outside, with a crowd of armoured men. ‘Town’s full of irks,’ she said. Her sword was in her hand, and behind her, men were cleaning the dark blood from their blades.

He nodded. ‘We have to keep the street clear for sorties,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘That’s going to suck,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. And took her party to move stones and fallen roof tiles.

The captain went with them.

It was brutal work. As the spring sun rose it burned, distant and orange, through the smoke-filled air. It was growing warm, and inside forty pounds of chain and plate, and a heavy quilted arming cote, it was hot.

Just bending to lift a stone was hard enough in armour.

It took five of them to lift a fallen roof beam.

When they began to complain, he pointed out that it was their horses who would come through here in the dark.

They went on, picking up rubble, pushing obstructions aside.

After an hour, the captain was soaked through. He collapsed on a low stone wall and Toby handed him a flagon of water.

Thump-snack.

‘Son of a bitch,’ the captain cursed, and the stone slammed into a church fifty paces distant, blowing a hole through the tile roof and vanishing inside.

He began to stand up, and the irks attacked.

There were only a dozen of them; desperate, and brave, and ferocious.

When the rush was cleared, the captain found that the armoured man at his back was Ser George Brewes.

The flagon of water was still unbroken by a miracle. He took a swig, spat, and handed the jug to Ser George.

Ser George leaned on his sword. ‘Feg,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Irks. I’ve heard of them.’

The captain just panted.

‘Like killing children,’ Ser George said.

The whole sky was a pink-red. Another rock crashed to earth off to their left.

‘You really think we can hold?’ Ser George asked.

‘Yes,’ the captain wheezed. He’d taken a cut on the back of his shoulder. He could feel the blood mixing with his sweat. I need to learn to heal myself. It was trickling down his side – warm, instead of cold.

Why? Why did she turn her back on me?

He made a face.

‘It would be something,’ Ser George admitted.

‘Yes,’ the captain managed.

Toby – unarmoured and unarmed – had survived the rush from the irks. He’d simply run away. Now he was back.

‘I’ve food,’ he said.

His scrip was packed with beef, bread and good round cheeses and Sauce’s men-at-arms fell on him like scavengers on a carcass. His head was patted a dozen times. He had a meat pie for himself. But he always seemed to.

Sauce moved among them. ‘Drink water,’ she said, as if they were children and turned to the captain. ‘Think they’ll try again?’ she asked.

The captain shrugged, and the weight of his armour and the pain in his shoulder defeated the motion completely. So he bobbed his head. ‘No idea.’ He took a deep breath. His breastplate seemed to be too small, and he couldn’t catch his breath. The smoke in the air was burning the inside of his lungs.

It was a very small working, an insidious thing. He saw it as soon as he made the effort.

The air was full of a poison. He couldn’t even see how it was done.

Sauce started to cough.

Harmodius! He called.

I see it, lad.

Do something! the captain shouted in his head.

Lissen Carak – Amicia

His shout came to her as clearly as his anguish.

She was working on Sym’s back, running her hands along the weels left by the lash, and trying to fix some of the deeper issues, as well. The captain’s thoughts were not helping her concentration.

She reached out instinctively. It was in the air. Poison. She read it from his thoughts.

She tasted the air through his mouth, and felt it through his lungs.

She was in him.

Then he slammed his gate shut.

She was standing over Sym, with her hands clenched into fists. Shaking.

Captain! She sent.

He responded.

It’s an unhealing. A curse.

Tell me.

You cannot banish it. You can only heal it.

Another voice. The Magus. I see! Well thought, mistress.

Now it was her turn to raise her defences. Get out! She said it aloud too.

Sym looked at her.

‘Not you, silly,’ she muttered.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain could feel the poison thickening in the air and he didn’t know how to heal. Although now that she showed him, he could see it.

A curse.

The physical manifestation of a curse.

He went into his tower. ‘I need help,’ he said to his tutor.

She smiled. ‘Ask me anything,’ she said.

‘A curse. A physical curse – a poison in the air.’ He went to the door to his tower.

‘He’s waiting for you to open it,’ she said.

‘I think he’s busy, and a lot of people are going to die if I don’t act.’ He reached to door.

‘If it is physical, perhaps we can move it physically,’ Prudentia said. She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t know healing, either.’

‘That’s a fine thought.’ He looked up at his symbols. ‘Wind,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Prudentia agreed.

He spoke the names. ‘St George, Zephyr, Capricorn,’ he said, and the great ranges of symbols rotated silently.

He touched the door.

He could feel the enemy, and he opened it anyway.

And slammed it back shut.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

The wind came up without warning – first a heavy gust that cooled them, and then a mighty rush of air from the east.

Sauce drew a shuddering breath.

‘Get a scarf over your face,’ the captain shouted. ‘Anything.’

The wind moved the poison – but he could still smell it.

And then he felt the sending. It was gentle as snow, and just for a heartbeat the air seemed to sparkle all around them, as if the world was made of magic.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius watched the Abbess’s working and he could only think of Thorn’s statement that men were too divided.

It was beautiful. The sort of mathematical Hermeticism that moved him the most deeply. In it were the rotations of the planets and the paths of the stars across the heavens. And many other things, thought and unthought . . .

‘You are far more powerful than I had imagined,’ Harmodius said.

She smiled. Just for a moment, it was the Queen’s smile.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘You know who I am,’ she said it playfully. She rose from her seat. ‘I think Thorn will find it very hard to use that trick again.’

Harmodius raised an eyebrow. ‘Trick?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t Hermeticism. It wasn’t a working. Not as I understand them.’

‘There are more things on heaven and earth than are in your philosophy,’ she said. ‘He uses the deaths of the irks to fuel his curse. It is a very, very ancient way to power magic.’

Harmodius nodded in sudden understanding. ‘But you-’

‘I stand for life,’ the Abbess said. ‘Me, and my God, as well.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘He will not be back for some time. I need to speak to a novice. Pray excuse me.’

Harmodius bowed. As she swept past him, he said, ‘Lady-’

‘Yes? Magus?’ She paused. Her attendants paused, and she waved them on.

‘If we linked, lady-’ he said.

She made a moue. ‘Then you would know all my innermost thoughts. And I yours,’ she said.

‘We would be more powerful,’ he insisted.

‘I am already linked to my novices. And to all my sisters,’ she said. ‘We are a choir.’

‘Of course you are,’ Harmodius said. ‘Gads, of course you are. I’m a fool.’ It was obvious, when she said it. Forty weak magi would still be very powerful indeed, together. But it would require incredible discipline.

Like monks.

Or nuns.

‘I will think on it,’ she said. She smiled.

He watched her go, and then sat beneath the apple tree.