A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  “Already acting,” the Red Knight said. “I have given orders and taken steps. Yes, Your Grace. I will probably be emperor.”

  “Liviapolis?” she asked.

  “I must see the west secure before I can act. I will need my company.” Gabriel met her eyes.

  “You swore to uphold me and my son,” the queen said.

  “I will,” Gabriel said. “I will be the best ally any Queen of Alba ever had.”

  “Would you decline the title if I so ordered you?” she asked.

  Gabriel was still kneeling at her side. He took a breath. People were looking at them. Master Smythe was close behind him. But it seemed a day for truth.

  “I would not take this thing, if I thought there was another way,” he said. “Indeed, I have already refused it once,” he went on, with an attempt at humour. Seeing nothing but fear in the queen’s eyes, he shrugged. “Yes, Your Grace. I am your man. If you tell me to decline, I will decline, and do my best to support Irene in making the decisions she must make. But...”

  “But you do not trust her,” the queen said.

  “I do not think she has the training to actually be empress,” Gabriel said. “None of them have had to...bah. Never mind. I may be full of hubris. My greatest lesson in the last year has been that I am not the center of this, any more than you or Amicia or the babe.”

  The queen leaned down. “And Blanche? What becomes of her, if you marry Irene?”

  Gabriel smiled. “I will not marry Irene.” He made a face. “Your Grace...this is not the place. But I have learned things in the last few days about myself...about Blanche.” He shrugged. “I am not sure I could now marry Irene just to be emperor. What if she snores?”

  “I snore!” the queen said, and for some reason, Master Smythe laughed very hard.

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

  Master Smythe waved a hand, rather weakly.

  Gabriel turned back to the queen. “And she has tried to murder me at least once. Possibly as many as three times.”

  The queen sat back, eyes steady, large, and deep. Some men found her eyes difficult to meet. Some men made the mistake of confusing the frankness of her gaze with interest, or romance.

  “Will she attempt to murder Blanche?” the queen asked. “That would not please me at all.”

  “Nor me, Your Grace.” He accepted her nod as a dismissal.

  “Towbray’s son married a laundress, did he not?” she asked. “The two of you might start quite a fashion.”

  “Think of the poor laundresses, Your Grace,” Gabriel said.

  The queen smiled. “You will consider marrying Blanche?” she asked.

  Gabriel knew that many paths branched from this point. He could imagine being angry at this intrusion into his private life...except that really, Blanche had probably done more to save the queen at Eastertide than any other person except he himself. And the queen had every right—feudal, human, even, by the rood, hermetical—to view Blanche as within her circles. He could imagine lying smoothly, except that, after a spring of war, childbirth, and camping, they all knew each other very well. Too well.

  He frowned. “Your Grace, the lady in question and I have not discussed this. At all.” He bowed his head. “I am not ready...”

  “But you are not against it,” she shot back.

  “I do not regard Your Grace’s lady as a trull sufficient only to serve my needs and to be discarded at will,” Gabriel said, discovering that he was, after all, angry at this intrusion into his private life.

  The queen leaned back and breathed in. Her face was brightly flushed, her eyes sparkled, and she, too, was angry.

  The two of them looked at each other, eyes crossed like blades, for too long, and then both of them cracked. Gabriel had to work to quell a snort, but he managed.

  The queen nodded. “Very well,” she said. She rose, and the people left in the hall all froze, turned, and bowed. “I suppose that is what I wanted to hear, and I will equally suppose that I deserved the arch tone for my impudence, but at least today, Ser Knight, you are still one of my gentlemen, and she is one of my ladies, and all the rules and lessons of my court of love apply to you and she, the more so as both of you conduct yourselves on the public stage.” She leaned down. In his ear, she said, “Many a maid, and many a matron, would think you the prize of all prizes just now, Ser Gabriel. So pity Blanche, who must see every woman about her with better blood, more land, and more dowry as her rival or her superior.”

  She stood back from him. “Do you by any chance know when your brother intends to wed my Mary?”

  Gabriel bowed his best bow. “Madame, it has been mentioned in my hearing, but not, if you take my meaning, discussed. The press of the war.”

  The queen looked down the hall, where Becca Almspend was motioning insistently. She came forward. “Your Grace, we must move. Ser Ranald is loading wagons even now...”

  “And when will you wed your paramour, Becca?” the queen asked.

  Becca curtsied. “When I have a minute to breathe, Your Grace. Now—”

  “No, Becca. This is as important as the conduct of the war and the new exchequer and the harvest and the fur trade. Pax. Ser Gabriel, what would you say if I endowed Blanche with...a new creation, perhaps a barony in the west, on the wall?”

  Gabriel didn’t like being badgered, and he was feeling the spark of animosity that could make him say things he might later regret. He bowed. “Your Grace,” he said coldly, “do you imagine that I will bargain with you for titles when I have just declined to be Earl of Westwall?”

  “You may go,” she said. “You may come back when you remember how to speak to me.”

  The Red Knight did not, quite, spit at her feet. He bowed, a little distantly, nodded civilly enough to Lady Almspend but without any form of eye contact, and walked from the hall.

  At the foot of the steps, he found a long line of people, mostly squires and pages, each with what appeared to be a sack of flour.

  “Duchess Mogon requests a moment,” Toby muttered behind him. Gabriel turned, glared at Toby, and walked back down half a flight to where the great duchess stood in the yard, watching the sky.

  She wasted no time on ceremony. “You go to fly to the army,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I have four wyverns willing to accompany you,” she said. “They will carry flour too. And fight, if need be. They owe the alliance and they are ready to begin to prove it.”

  Despite the extremity of Gabriel’s annoyance, he grinned. “I accept,” he said.

  Mogon motioned to a wyvern who waited in the midst of the courtyard. People flowed around the monster on both sides. A few glanced at the great winged beast, but most concentrated on their errands as if there were not, in fact, a giant, beaked terror sitting in the middle of the courtyard.

  “Ser Gabriel, this is Beltan,” Mogon said. “Beltan will take a full wing of the Wolfshead Mountain wyverns to follow you.”

  Beltan nodded slowly.

  The Red Knight stepped forward into the aura of fear that Beltan cast by her nature and placed a hand on the breast of the wyvern. She regarded him with some surprise, like a cat who had not expected to be patted.

  “It won’t be fun carrying all that baggage,” he said.

  She raised her wings slightly.

  He tried again in Low Archaic, which he had heard wardens use. This time she nodded again.

  “Let the handlers be attentive,” she said. “I will do thy bidding.”

  Gabriel bowed to her, then ran for the stairs, calling for Toby.

  * * *

  The tailors had his entire flying ensemble ready to wear, and he changed from a light doublet to the leather one with padding, like an arming coat, and over it, a breastplate and his arm harnesses. Over that went a white wool gown lined in squirrel fur, which was long enough to reach his ankles. A saddler had just finished making adjustments to the harness, and even as he changed, Master Smythe came in and placed a burlap bag on one of
Gabriel’s chests. The bed was already gone, and so was his harness.

  “Cull Pett has gone, but he was kind enough to make you another gift. From me.” Master Smythe reached out. “Show me your arm, then.”

  The silver-and-steel cuff with a decorative brass band ended with a short silver spike where the bone would have been. The cut that Cull Pett had made the night before had already healed, and the cuff looked as if it were part of him in an organic way. If he had been made of metal.

  Master Smythe looked at it. “Mine is already growing back,” he said. “But this may be better.” He took the silver hand from the burlap sack and slid it down the spike, where something engaged with a sharp click.

  There was no warning. A spike of pain struck Gabriel, and he flinched and cried aloud, and then it was gone, and in its place...

  ...the hand. He flexed it and it worked. He had trouble making the fingers match up exactly.

  “Touch your nose with your index finger,” Master Smythe directed him. He came close several times.

  “Practice. Really a foolish thing to say...you’ll use it constantly. It will improve.” The dragon smiled. “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  “You are?” Gabriel asked, delighted. Master Smythe might be annoying, godlike, endlessly patronizing, but he was, at some odd level, a good comrade. Like family. Like Gavin. Like his mother...

  “I may even carry a sack of flour,” Master Smythe said. “I will see you in the courtyard.” He smiled. “No, I’ll see you in the air,” he said, and stepped out.

  It was Toby who opened the burlap bag. Ser Gabriel was armed with his own long sword and his magnificent dagger. He was ready to go, and avoiding the walk out on the beam.

  “It’s a helmet,” Toby said. “Damn!” he said, pulling it clear of the bag.

  The helmet was blue-white steel, edged in gold. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t like any helmet Toby or Gabriel or Anne Woodstock had ever seen.

  It was composed of a simple skullcap—deceptively simple, as it had complex planes and curves for glancing blows, and two hinged cheek pieces that conformed to the shape of the head and the upper neck, locking under the chin. The protection offered was superb, as was the visibility. There was a visor that locked both up and down.

  It was fully padded inside, and it was as light as air.

  It took the squire and page a little while to understand the helmet. In fact, to Gabriel’s delight, they put it on Anne Woodstock to learn how all the catches fastened. But when they had it on Gabriel, he grinned.

  “I love presents,” he said.

  It took him five long minutes to get into his saddle. Even the lightest helmet ever made, atop a heavy garment and with some armour added, made the climb along the perch more perilous, and the heat inside the new leather doublet was stifling. To add to his discomfort, he almost missed his foot entering into the stirrup. He couldn’t bend his neck in the new helmet.

  He took a long moment to breathe, steadied himself as best he could, and tried not to think about the roughly hundred or more people watching him, to say nothing of wyverns.

  Love you, said his mount. I won’t let you fall.

  Gabriel smiled inside his helmet. He got a foot into the stirrup, gathered the shreds of his courage, and swung his left leg, and then, with a bit of a bump, he was in the saddle.

  You weigh more, Ariosto said. And I am laden with all this milled wheat. Is this to see how strong I am?

  Gabriel felt a new bolt of fear. Is it too much? he asked.

  I don’t know...Ariosto said, and leapt off the perch.

  They went a long way down. Gabriel’s heart went into his throat, and so did his stomach and a good part of his intestines, but the long drop to the ground was nothing compared to the moment at which the griffon altered the geometry of his wings and the plummeting rush became...

  ...a stooping glide. The deceleration was worse than the acceleration, and Gabriel was forced back into his saddle, his lower back muscles relieved only by the steel back plate. It was exactly like being hit hard in a joust, and Gabriel thought fleetingly of fighting de Vrailly and being stretched over the crupper, and then the griffon’s powerful wings were beating, and they were skimming over the rooftops of Albinkirk.

  A wyvern with a wing of green fire rolled in ahead of him, and the sinuous neck reached back and there was a long screech, to which Ariosto responded. Gabriel hadn’t known him to be capable of such a terrifying sound...it rendered the great monster’s childhood screams from the tower nothing by comparison.

  My bones hurt, his mount said.

  You are having a growth spurt, Gabriel said, a phrase he’d learned from Blanche. Blanche...

  They were beating slowly up and up. Already, despite the bright sunlight, his fur-lined gown was no longer oppressive. Suddenly he was in shadow and he looked up, and there was Beltan, her head mere inches from his.

  She screamed something, and despite a steel helmet and padding, she deafened him.

  Ariosto sounded rueful inside his head. She says, if you will fly, you must learn to look around all the time. That the sky, by its emptiness, is very dangerous, and that the rush of wind deafens all.

  Gabriel rolled his head left and right. He spent a little time learning to look beneath them, by rolling Ariosto slightly left and then right. He practiced looking behind and so learned why all the flying creatures of the wild had long necks.

  The other wyverns fell into formation, a long wedge with Master Smythe at the apex. After a few leagues, he slipped off to the right and Beltan took the lead with a single, sharp raaack.

  She immediately banked, hard, to her own right, cutting across their line of flight at a ninety-degree angle. Gabriel was alert and ready, deep in his saddle, and he took the turn in his hips, already leaning into it, and Ariosto kept his place in the formation well enough, although he had to power forward with his wings to close the gap he briefly created. Behind them, a younger wyvern gave a sharp cry and rolled up, so that its head was level with Gabriel’s, its wings vertical.

  Gabriel guessed it was merely showing off, and managed a grin. Then he reached up and closed his visor, and instantly discovered what was magical about his new helmet.

  Even at this high, bitterly cold altitude, and at this speed, no wind penetrated the visor. Gabriel probed it lightly in the aethereal and there was a barrier where the eye slit was.

  And then he nearly lost his seat. A moment’s inattention and he was turning hard to the left, and falling.

  It became obvious over the next hour that the wyverns were playing with him. But Gabriel guessed that Master Smythe had arranged this, and it was certainly excellent training. The griffon’s superior wingspan and size was placed against their vastly superior experience of the air, and the wyverns were decisively better at everything. But Ariosto, deprived of parental training, seemed to inhale the lessons as they went, so that as fast as the wyverns pulled a trick on him, he would learn it—rolls, deceptions, wing-folded dives, use of the sun and clouds...

  A childhood in the air, compacted into an hour.

  They are much better than we are, Ariosto said.

  You are trying to do all the flying for us both, Gabriel said. He, too, was learning. There were ways that he could help or harm his mount’s performance. Luckily, they were very like the tricks of riding, and he had the muscles and the experience to experiment immediately with postures and leans. For his own comfort, he found that leaning forward, balanced on the balls of his feet in his stirrups, legs like springs, helped him tolerate the rapid decelerations at the end of dives.

  But when the wyverns began—playfully, he hoped—to spar in the air, he almost lost his seat in the first exchange. A wyvern changed direction as fast as a flock of starlings in autumn, and Ariosto did the same, pivoting on one wingtip, his great body contorting in a sudden and exuberant left bank, and Gabriel was for a moment unable to think or act, and only the force of the turn pinning him to the monster’s back saved him from a seve
n-thousand-foot fall to the Adnacrags below.

  Love you, Ariosto said, chagrined.

  Love you too, Gabriel managed with his teeth gritted.

  Over the high peaks there was cloud cover, and the whole wing cavorted, flying along canyons of cloud, brushing the insubstantial stuff with their wingtips. And suddenly, as before, Beltan turned. This time she went into the cloud and vanished.

  Ariosto followed her, and Gabriel clung to his saddle and reins and suddenly his head was everywhere, and they were lost, blind, and in danger of collision. A wyvern screamed near at hand and then another, and like a curtain lifting they were back in sunlight. The formation was a shambles, and a wave of wyvern recriminations passed over them, but Beltan beat her powerful wings and turned along a tendril of cloud, and there was Wolfshead Mountain, one of the tallest of the Adnacrags, so close that its stony immensity was its own terror.

  Gabriel learned that lesson, too. In cloud, mountains can kill you. But he had also experienced something else...the sheer, unbelievable wonder of flying. Of being free of the constraints of mere earth.

  Don’t forget, comrade, Gabriel said, that if we fight, I won’t be useless weight.

  Ah! Ariosto said. What can you do?

  Gabriel had prepared a number of options. I need to practice, he said. Certainly the difficulties of preparing a hermetical working, summoning potentia and creating ops and casting in an aerial skirmish looked dire. Much less the dimension difficulties of aiming and hitting a target.

  He experimented a little while they were in level flight at high altitude. With a steady seat and no interference, it was no harder than working on horseback...difficult enough, for all love. He summoned power and tested various workings until he found two that might serve, but by then they were descending.

  Gabriel made his now-routine check, looking all around, and found the allied army under his left heel, moving slowly with their wagons along the high beech woods of a ridgeline.

  All along the ridge, steel was flashing, men were pointing, archers were dismounting, and...

  A heavy arrow rose from the center of the army.