The Red Knight

Chapter Fourteen

Father Hugh

Valley of the Cohocton – Peter

Peter didn’t recover so much as grow used to what was gone, like a man who has lost a hand, or an arm. And it took days, not hours.

Ota Qwan scarcely paid him any heed at all – indeed, now that he was paramount war leader, Ota Qwan was loud and definite and far, far too important to waste time on one new warrior. Peter walked all the way back from the Ford Fight, as the Sossag came to call it, to their camp in a haze of fatigue and a darkness that he’d never known, even as a slave.

Three nights in a row, he sat by a dead fire, staring at the cold coals and considering ending his own life.

And then he would hear Ota Qwan – instructing, ordering, leading, demanding.

And that would give him the strength to go on.

On the fourth night on the trail back, Skahas Gaho came and sat with him, and offered him some rabbit, and he ate of it, and then together the two of them drank some of the dead men’s mead – honey sweet. The Sossag warrior was quickly drunk, and he sang songs, and Peter sang his own people’s songs and in the morning his head hurt, and he was alive.

It was just as well, because they were moving easily along trails as soon as the sun was up, and suddenly, every warrior fell flat on his face, so that – just for a moment – Peter was the only man standing. Then he threw himself flat. He’d been so deep in his pain that he had missed the signal.

Scouts wormed their way into the bush and came back to Ota Qwan with reports, and the rumour swept the column that there was a great army on the road. Far too large and well-prepared for the Sossag people to challenge alone.

They had won the Ford Fight. But they had lost many warriors. Too many warriors. Too much experience, too many skills.

So they rose as they had fallen to the ground, almost as if a single spirit inhabited many bodies – and they loped off to the north, and they climbed well into the foothills of the Adnacrags, avoiding the enemy by many miles. It was only after three days of gruelling travel over the most difficult terrain that Peter had ever known when they climbed over a low ridge, and saw their camps spread across the woods and green fields of the Lissen where it ran into the Cohocton. From the top of the long ridge, Peter could see thousands of points of light – like the stars in the sky, but every one of them was a fire, and around that fire stood a dozen men, or boglins, or other creatures – such creatures as served Thorn and yet loved fire. And more creatures slept cold in the woods, or slept in streams, or mud.

Peter let Skahas Gaho pass him on the trail and he stood in the deepening twilight at the top of the ridge, and looked down. Almost at his feet rose the great fortress of the lady, which the Sossag called the Rock, and its towers looked like broken teeth, and its arrow slits glowed with fire like a Jack-o’-lantern.

And away to the east, at the edge of his vision, he could see another host of fires burning. The army around which the Sossag had slipped. The King of Alba.

The armies were gathered, and in the last light, Peter watched a tall column of ravens and vultures riding the drafts over the Valley of the Cohocton.

Waiting.

He sat and watched the play of light – massive pulses of power, flashing back and forth like a summer storm.

Lissen Carak – Thurkan

Thurkan watched the dark sun slip away. He had seen the Enemy captain face down Thorn, pounding him with blue fire until the Wild sorcerer fled. And unlike Thorn, the dark sun’s bodyguard came and rescued him, their ranks closing tight around him.

The daemon had learned much about the skills of the knights.

He turned to his sister. ‘Thorn is beaten.’

She spat. ‘Thorn is not beaten, any more than you were last night. Thorn said he would kill the great machine-that-throws-rocks and he has done so. Stop your foolish preening.’

Thurkan shivered with suppressed need to fight.

‘I will challenge Thorn,’ Thurkan said.

‘You will not!’ Mogan replied.

Lissen Carak – Michael

The Siege of Lissen Carak – Day Thirteen

Last night the enemy came with all his might to storm the fortress. The King’s Magus and the Abbess and the Red Knight duelled with him and drove him back, but the Abbess died defending her place, shot in the back by a foul traitor.

Michael sat with his head propped on one hand, looking at the hastily scrawled words. He sipped the wine next to him and tried not to go to sleep over the journal.

The captain was in the hospital. His breastplate had a dent in it the size of a man’s fist. They’d lost five men-at-arms.

The archers were openly saying that it was time to ask for terms.

He turned on the wooden stool he was using. Kaitlin Lanthorn lay, fully dressed, on his bedroll. She’d come in after the sortie returned, kissed him, and stayed by his side while he saw to little things – like having the armourer get the dent out of the captain’s breatplate.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said.

She lay, open eyed. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. She sat up. ‘Oh, I might be wrong, but Amicia says I am. She’d know.’ Kaitlin shrugged. ‘I’m pregnant, and the sorcerer is going to kill us all, anyway. So what’s it matter if I spend the night with you?’

Michael tried to think like the captain. To balance it all out. But he couldn’t, so he put the quill down, and took her face in his hands. ‘I love you,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Cause I love you, too, and we’re going to have a baby.’

‘If we live through the next few days.’ He lay down next to her.

She turned to him. ‘You’ll protect me, I think.’

Michael stared into the dark.

Mag stood with her daughter Sukey and a dozen other nuns and local women, laying out the dead.

This time there was no feeling of triumph. The cost was high – the Abbess was dead, and there was a line of figures wrapped in white linen to show the losses of her community and the losses of the captain’s company, intermingled.

And the Red Knight was gone, carried into the hospital.

The Abbess had been killed by an arrow. And no one seemed to be looking into her murder.

Mary Lanthorn smoothed a sheet over Ser Tomas Durren. ‘He was bonny,’ she said.

Fran shook her head. Sukey sobbed, and Mag pulled her daughter’s head against her chest. Sukey’s husband was dead too. Third winding sheet from the right. She held Sukey for a long time, and then went back to wrapping Third Leg. His body had been crushed – his face almost erased – and yet Mag was gentle in wrapping the fresh white linen tight. Details mattered to Mag.

God, let these boys come to you swiftly despite the lives they led.

‘I hear the Red Knight’s on the verge of death,’ Mary said.

Amy Carter looked up. ‘That novice will save him. Amicia.’

Kitty looked at her sister. ‘The men are saying she’s a witch.’ She looked at Sukey and Mag for a moment, and then back at her sister. ‘Ben says she killed the Abbess.’

Amy’s eyes grew wide.

Mag put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Best not be spreading that kind o’ talk, girls.’

‘It’s all around in the stables,’ Kitty said. ‘All the boys is saying that some of the sisters is witches.’

Sister Miram was shaking out a winding sheet. Her hearing must have been unnaturally sharp. She turned.

‘Who says we are witches?’ she asked.

Kitty blanched.

Miram frowned. ‘Child. Who is spreading this poison?’

Kitty looked around, uncertain. ‘My brother Ben says the priest said it.’

Sukey looked at her mother. ‘Bill Fuller too.’ She spat the words. ‘Fuller’s been talking crap all night.’

Miram looked around. She went and touched the first body in the row – smaller then the others. The Abbess.

‘I have been remiss,’ Sister Miram said. ‘I let loss cloud my vision of earthly iniquity.’

Kitty Carter looked at her sister. ‘I didn’t really think Amicia killed the Abbess.’

Amy rolled her eyes.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

It wasn’t yet morning when he came to. Noise in the corridor had awakened him. He heard armour – and he was in the wrong bed.

There was no sword by his bed.

The door opened, and Sister Miram entered his cell, in the full robes of the order; Ser Jehannes in harness, and Michael; Johne, the Bailli of one of the towns, and Master Random.

He pulled the linen sheet up over his chest.

‘The Abbess died in the enemy attack,’ Sister Miram said. Her face had aged.

The captain had scarcely heard her speak. What she had said took a moment to register, so that his mind explored the fact of Sister Miram’s speaking for heartbeats before he realised the import of what she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Useless, empty words.

‘There’s open talk of negotiation. Of surrendering the fortress for free passage away,’ Ser Jehannes said. The others flinched at his tone.

‘No,’ The captain said. ‘There will be neither surrender nor negotiation.’ He was noticing that he’d been bandaged around the ribs, and that all the hair had been shaved away – well. Lots of hair. He winced. The Abbess was dead and he realised that he had, in his way, loved her.

Always looking for a better mother, he thought. ‘If you all will leave Michael to dress me,’ he said quietly.

‘Dress quickly,’ Ser Jehannes said. ‘It’s happening right now.’ He was quiet. ‘All the local people. Some of the men.’

Sister Miram withdrew to the door. ‘She would never have surrendered,’ she said quietly. ‘The men in the courtyard are saying Amicia did it,’ she added.

The captain winced and met her eye. ‘I’ll see to it.’

The nun closed the door.

The captain got himself out of bed, despite a touch of vertigo. He had a feeling he knew from childhood – the feeling of having tapped his Hermetical powers utterly. An emptiness, but also a good feeling, like a well-exercised body.

Prudentia is dead.

It was not the first time that good people had died to keep him alive.

Toby appeared with his old black doublet and his old black hose and his fine gold belt. He looked terrified.

Hose took time to get on – he tried to quiet his own pulse. To think about something besides the Abbess and his tutor.

‘She was murdered,’ Ser Jehannes said. ‘Someone shot the Abbess in the back.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Gelfred says it was Witch Bane.’

The thought of it made him physically sick.

‘And no one saw this?’ he asked wearily.

‘Everyone was watching the fight outside the walls,’ Ser Jehannes said.

The captain sighed. ‘Secure the gates and all the passages. There is a passage under the main donjon which leads out of the fortress. Right now, it’s blocked by our wagon-bodies, but put a pair of archers – good archers – on the stairs. Give me a nod when this is done.’

‘When you say I should secure-’ Jehannes paused.

‘As if we were taking the fortress for ourselves,’ the captain said harshly. ‘As if we were in Galle. Trust no one who is not one of ours. Use force if you have to. Secure the exits, Jehannes!’

The old knight saluted. ‘Yes, my lord.’

Michael had his boots. He buckled them around the ankles, laced the tops to the captain’s pourpoint.

‘Full armour, gloves, war sword,’ the captain said.

Michael began to arm him. It wasn’t a quick process and some parts hurt a great deal. But wearing armour was itself a statement.

The arming doublet and mail haubergon weighed on him like a shirt of lead and a hairshirt all together. Many knights believed that the very pain of wearing armour was a penance before God.

Well.

Leg harness, starting with the cuisses, and then the greaves and the steel sabatons that buckled so neatly over his boots, right to the shaped and pointed toes. Michael pointed the cuisses into his arming doublet at an amazing speed, while Toby supported him.

He stood, flexed his legs, and Michael, aided now by Jacques, fitted his breast and back over his head and latched it shut.

‘Had a dent in it like you wouldn’t believe,’ Michael said.

‘Oh, I would,’ the captain said.

Michael snorted. ‘Carlus says taking the dent out took more strength than he’s ever had to use,’ he said. ‘Like the steel was magicked.’

Each of them took an arm harness – vambrace, elbow cop and rerebrace in a single unit on sliding rivets, a miracle of craftsmanship in gilded bronze and hardened steel – and clipped them on, buckling them to his upper arms and then to his shoulders with straps, and then his pauldrons went on, and the circular plates that strapped to the pauldrons and guarded his under arms.

The golden belt at his waist.

Golden spurs at his heels.

Gloves, and a sword, and the baton of his office.

‘There you are, my lord,’ Michael said.

The captain smiled – it was done as fast and as painlessly as it could have been done by anyone. ‘You are a fine squire,’ he said.

He walked out of the recovery ward, looked down the main corridor, and saw his brother.

Gawin had his feet over the edge of the bed.

‘Stay where you are,’ the captain said gently. ‘Michael, stay here with this man.’

Michael nodded. And saluted. He recognised his captain’s tone.

‘But-’ Gawin began.

The captain shook his head. ‘Not now, messire.’

He walked down the corridor to the other ward. Ser Jehannes had already passed. Low Sym was dressing in his gambeson.

‘Have a sword, Sym?’ the captain said.

Sym nodded wordlessly.

The captain pointed at Amicia’s elegant back, standing at the dry sink across the room. ‘She is not to leave this ward until I return,’ he said. ‘If you harm her you are a dead man. But she is not to leave this room. Understand?’

Amicia whirled on him. ‘What?’

‘For your own protection, sister,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘Father Henry has killed the Abbess. But he will seek to blame you.’

‘Father Henry?’ she came towards him, a hand at her chest. ‘The priest?’

He was at the top of the stairs. ‘Obey. On your life.’ He ignored her outcry, and went down the steps, past the commanderies, to the courtyard. At the door, Bad Tom waited, armoured cap a pied, a pole-axe in his left hand.

‘It’s bad,’ he said.

The captain nodded. He pulled on his gloves, and took the staff of his command from his belt. ‘On me,’ he said, and Tom opened the door.

The sound hit him. Anger first – then fear.

Every farmer and tenant was in the courtyard – four hundred men and women packed into four hundred square ells. The noise was like a living thing.

The dispensary had a wooden step, and two of his men-at-arms were keeping it clear.

On the other side of the courtyard, a dozen big farmers stood together. With them were some of the merchants.

The captain turned to Carlus, and he blew his trumpet. It was loud, and shrill.

Every head turned.

The captain waved the staff over the assembly. ‘Disperse!’ he said into the sudden silence. ‘There will be no negotiation, and no surrender,’ he went on.

A dangerous murmur began.

‘Kindly disperse to your stations and your beds, and let’s have no more of this,’ the captain kept his voice level and kind.

One of the merchants raised his head. ‘Who are you, messire, to decide for us?’

The captain took a deep breath and struggled with the spark of rage that hit him. Why did good men always make him feel like this? ‘I will not debate this with you,’ he said. ‘If you wish to leave, the gate will be opened for you.’

Another farmer shouted ‘Fuck you! That’s just death! It’s our land that’s destroyed. Our farms that are burned, you sell-sword. Get out of the way, or we’ll put you out.’

Jehannes was waving to him from the portcullis winch. He had a key in his hand.

‘This fortress is under the protection of my company,’ The captain said loudly. ‘The lady Abbess charged me with its defence, and I will hold it until I am dead. The power that invests us will not hesitate to lie, deceive, or betray us to our doom – but it will not let anyone here escape alive. The only hope any of you have is to join us in resisting to the last drop of our blood. Or better yet, to the last drop of theirs.’ He looked around. ‘The king, ‘ he almost choked on the title, but he got it out. ‘The king is on his way. Do not give way to despair. Now, please disperse.’

‘You can’t fight all of us!’ shouted the farmer.

The captain sighed. ‘In fact, we can kill every one of you.’ He spoke out. ‘Look around you. Would the Abbess ever have given in? She isn’t even buried yet and look at you. Ready to surrender?’ He pushed his way into the courtyard, ignoring Tom’s protests. He pushed his way through the crowd until he was nose to nose with the big farmer.

‘Priest says she was a witch,’ the farmer said.

People were shuffling away from him.

‘Priest says all these so-called nuns is witches!’ the farmer insisted. ‘Souls black as night.’

A few men nodded. None of the women did.

The captain passed his arm through the farmer’s arm. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

‘I don’t have to – argh!’ the farmer stumbled. He was unable to resist the armoured man, and was pulled along through the crowd to the great gate.

The gate was open, and the sun was shining beyond the walls of the fortress.

‘Look out there,’ the captain said. ‘Look out there at what Thorn has done. He betrayed his king. He betrayed his people. He has made himself a construct of the Wild, a sorcerer without compare, unlimited by laws or even friends. And you think that is better than your Abbess? Because a priest told you that black is white, and white is black?’ The captain spat the words.

‘And I should trust you?’ the farmer growled.

‘Since you are so obviously a fool – yes. You’d do better trusting me, the man who fights to defend you, than trusting to the God-damned priest, who killed your Abbess.’

The crowd was backing away from him, and he had to assume his eyes were burning.

The farmer stood his ground, but his jaw was trembling. ‘You’re one of them too. And the priest says the other witch killed the Abbess. For her power.’

The crowd muttered again. ‘You’re one of them!’ shouted a man at the front.

‘I am whatever I choose to be,’ said the captain. ‘So are you. What do you choose?’

Tom and Jehannes stepped up behind him. And with them, a dozen other men-at-arms in plate armour, and most of the archers. There were archers on the walls, on the stumps of the towers.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ the captain said to the crowd.

Sister Miram walked out of the wreckage of the chapel with Mag, the seamstress. Miram raised her arms.

Mag spat. ‘Look at you, Bill Fuller.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Playing with fire. Going to stand here and get shot?’ She looked over the crowd. ‘Go to your beds. Let go. We’ve lost the Abbess. Let’s not spill any more blood here.’

‘We can take ’em,’ Fuller said. But his tone suggested he knew he was lying.

Mag walked over and slapped his face. ‘You always were a weak fool, Bill Fuller,’ she said. ‘They’ll kill every one of us, if they have to. We wouldn’t even hurt them to do it. And for what? The enemy is out there.’

Johne the Bailli came out of the chapel. ‘Well said, Maggie.’ He went and stood with Bad Tom. ‘I stand for the Abbess. We will not surrender.’

Maggie’s daughter Sukey came and stood with her. She was shaking.

The Carters started to burrow through the crowd.

Dan Favor went and stood with Ser Jehannes.

Amie Carter grabbed her sister’s wrist and towed her across the open space. She turned and faced the crowd. ‘Don’t be a pack of tom-fools,’ she said. ‘You been sorcelled. Can’t you feel it? Don’t be so stupid and pig-ignorant you can’t face it.’

Liz the laundress came and stood by Tom. Kaitlin Lanthorn walked across the open space.

‘Sluts and harlots,’ said a voice.

The heads of the crowd turned, as one.

Father Henry looked as if he’d been on the cross. His face was streaked in old, dried blood. His robe was flayed and fell around his waist, showing his ascetic body, lacerated with further cuts.

The people parted for him. He walked between them like a king.

‘Sluts and harlots. Are these your allies, Satan?’ He stopped at the edge of the crowd.

‘Not all of us are sluts, priest,’ said Master Random, and he burrowed into the crowd. ‘Adrian! Allan Pargeter! What are you doing with this man? Fomenting mischief? Master Random walked into the crowd, looking for other apprentices he knew.

‘You killed the Abbess,’ the captain said.

Father Henry drew himself up, and the captain knew he had his man. He was too proud to deny the crime.

Fool.

‘She was a witch, a creature of Satan who chose to put her own appetites against-’

The stone hit the priest in the head. He snapped around, eyes blazing, and just for a moment, he didn’t look like a gentle and crucified Jesus. He looked like a madman. His eyes raged.

‘Take that man,’ the Red Knight said. He pointed his baton.

Bad Tom reached out with his pole-axe, caught the priest’s foot with the head, and pulled, and the priest fell. Tom kicked him viciously, his armoured foot making a distinctive meaty sound as it connected with the priest’s gut.

The priest retched.

Two archers grabbed him and hoisted him. He tried to speak, and he got the butt of Tom’s pole-axe in the arch of his foot. He screeched.

And suddenly, there was no crowd. Just frightened people, looking for salvation.

And most of them asked – Where is the king?