The captain nodded. ‘Yes. I believe it. Go on.’
Jehannes shook his head. ‘It sounds blasphemous to me,’ he said.
Gelfred put his hands on his hips in exasperation. ‘I have a licence from the Bishop,’ he said.
The captain shrugged. ‘Get on with it, Gelfred.’
Gelfred brought out a game bag. It was stiff with blood, but then game bags generally were.
He extracted a dove – a very large specimen indeed – laid it on the camp table, and stretched out its wings.
‘The gyrfalcon took it down about two hours ago,’ he said. ‘No other bird we have is big enough.’
The captain was staring at the message tube on the bird’s leg.
Gelfred nodded. ‘It came out of the abbey, Captain,’ he said.
Milus handed him a tiny scroll no larger than his smallest finger. ‘Low Archaic,’ he said. ‘Has to limit the suspects.’
The captain ran his eyes over the writing. Neat, precise, and utterly damning – a list of knights, men-at-arms and archers; numbers, stores and defences. But no description. Nothing with which to catch a spy.
‘Limit the suspects in a convent?’ the captain said bitterly. ‘A hundred women, every one of whom can read and write low Archaic.’ And use power.
One of whom he knew was an Outwaller.
Gelfred nodded. ‘We have a traitor,’ he said, and the captain’s heart sank.
The captain leaned his head on his hand. ‘This is why you needed to meet me here,’ he said.
Gelfred nodded. ‘The traitor isn’t here,’ he said. ‘The traitor is in the fortress.’
The catain nodded for a while, the way a man will when he’s just heard bad news and can’t really take it all in. ‘Someone killed the Jack in the woods,’ he said. His eyes met Gelfred’s. ‘Someone stabbed Sister Hawisia in the back.’
Gelfred nodded. ‘Yes, my lord. Those are my thoughts, as well.’
‘Someone co-operated with a daemon to murder a nun.’ The captain scratched under his beard. ‘Even by my standards, that’s pretty bad.’
No one smiled.
The captain go tto his feet. ‘I’d like to have you hunt our traitor down, but I need you out in the woods,’ he said. ‘And it is going to get worse and worse out there.’
Gelfred smiled. ‘I like it.’ He looked around. ‘Better than in here, anyway.’
Lorica – Ser Gaston
Outside the town, a deputation of ten wagons full of forage, four local knights, and the town’s sheriff waited under the Royal Oak. The king rode up and embraced the sheriff, and the king’s constable accepted the four young knights and swore them to their duty. The quartermaster took charge of the wagons.
The sheriff was midway through telling the king of the burning of the Two Lions when he turned white, then red.
‘But that is the man!’ he said. ‘Your Grace! That is the man who ordered the inn burned!’ He pointed at de Vrailly.
De Vrailly shrugged. ‘Do I know you, ser?’ he asked, and rode to the king, the sheriff, and the other member’s of the Royal Household gathered under the great tree.
The sheriff sputtered. ‘You— Your Grace, this is the miscreant who ordered the inn burned! Who allowed the innkeeper to be beaten, a loyal man and a good—’
De Vrailly shook his head mildly. ‘You call me a miscreant?’
The king put his hand on de Vrailly’s bridle. ‘Hold hard, my lord. I must his this accusation.’ The king glared at his sheriff. ‘However baseless it is.’
‘Baseless?’ the sheriff shouted.
De Vrailly smiled. ‘Your Grace it is true. My squires kicked the worthless paysant and burned his inn as a lesson for his insolence.’ He raised his left eyebrow just a hair – his beautiful nostrils flared, and his lips thinned.
The king took a deep breath. Gaston watched him very carefully. He had already loosened the sword at his hip in its sheath. Not even de Vrailly would get away this time. The king’s justice could not be seen as weak in front of his own people, his vassals and his officers.
De Vrailly is insane, Gaston thought to himself.
‘Ser knight, you must explain yourself,’ the king said.
De Vrailly raised both eyebrows. ‘I am a lord, and I have the High Justice, the Middle Justice, and the Low Justice right here in my scabbard. I need no man’s leave to take a life. I have burned more peasants’ cots than a boy has pulled the wings off flies.’ De Vrailly shook his head. ‘Take my word, your Grace: the man received due payment for his foolishness. Let us hear no more about it.’
The sheriff put his hands on the pommel of his saddle as if to steady himself. ‘I have never heard the like of this. Listen, your Grace – this pompous foreigner, this so-called knight, also killed two squires of Ser Gawin Murien, and then, when I approached him, had me beaten. I was thrown into a shed, tied and bound. When I was rescued, I found the inn burned.’
Gaston pushed his horse into the angry group. ‘Your words in no way prove my lord’s guilt,’ he insisted. ‘You did not witness any of these things, yet now pronounce them truth.’
‘You were the one who hit me!’ the sheriff said.
Gaston had to restrain himself from shrugging. You are an ineffective, useless man and a shame on your king – and you were in my way. But he smiled, glanced at the king, and offered his hand. ‘For that I apologise. My cousin and I were newly landed, and failed to understand the laws of these parts.’
The king was firmly in the cleft stick of conflicting emotions, goals and needs – his indecision showed clearly on his face. He needed Jean de Vrailly’s three hundred knights and he needed to be seen to give justice. Gaston willed the sheriff to take his hand and clasp it. He willed it, and so did the king.
‘Messire, my cousin and I have joined the king to ride against the Wild.’ Gaston’s voice was low, urgent and yet soothing. ‘I beg your forgiveness before we go into battle.’
Gaston prayed that the king wasn’t looking at his cousin, whose expression at the word beg would have curdled milk.
The sheriff sniffed.
The king’s shoulders began to relax.
Almost as if against his will, the sheriff of Lorica took Gaston’s hand and clasped it. He left his glove on, which was rude enough, and he didn’t meet Gaston’s eye.
But the king seized the moment. ‘You will pay reparations to the town and to the innkeeper,’ he said. ‘The sum to be the full value of the inn and all of its goods and chattels. The sheriff will investigate the value and send a writ.’ The king turned in his saddle to address the Captal de Ruth. ‘You, who have announced your willingness to serve me, will first serve my sentence on this: your wages and those of all of your knights will be paid, in lieu of fine, to the innkeeper and to the town until the value set by the sheriff has been discharged.’
Jean de Vrailly sat on his horse, his beautiful face still and peaceful. Only Gaston knew he was considering killing the king.
‘We—’ he began, and the king turned in his saddle, showing some of the flexibility he had showed jousting.
‘Let the captal speak for himself,’ the king said. ‘You are glib in your cousin’s defence, my lord. But I must hear him speak his acceptance for himself.’
Gaston thought, He is very good at this. He has understood my cousin better than most men, and he has found a way to punish him while keeping him close and using his prowess against his enemies. Jean and his angel will not dominate this king in an afternoon. Outwardly, he bowed.
And glared at Jean.
Jean bowed as well. ‘I came to fight your enemies, your Grace,’ he said in his charming accent. ‘At my own expense. This ordinance makes little difference to me.’
Gaston winced.
The king looked around him, gathering eyes, gathering the opinions men cast with their body language, in subtle facial expressions, in the fretting of their horses. He pushed his tongue against his teeth – which Gaston had already come to read as a tic of frustration.
De Vrailly shrugged. ‘You wish me to say that I accept your law and your writ?’ he said, and contempt dripped from every word.
Here we go, Gaston thought.
The Earl of Towbray pushed his horse between the king and the captal. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is my fault.’
Both the king and de Vrailly looked at him as if he’d come between them in the lists.
‘I invited the Captal to Alba to serve me, and I failed – even after a youth spent fighting on the Continent – to understand how he would see us.’ The earl shrugged. ‘I will bear the cost, for my mistake.’
De Vrailly had the good grace to appear surprised. ‘But – no!’ he said suddenly. ‘But I insist! I must bear it.’
The king was looking at the Earl of Towbray the way a man might look at a rare flower suddenly discovered on a dung hill.
Gaston remembered to breathe.
And in moments men were chattering with relief, the convoy was forming up, and Gaston could ride to his cousin’s side.
‘This is not what the angel told me would happen,’ he said.
Gaston raised an eyebrow.
De Vrailly shrugged. ‘But it will suffice. It irks me, cousin, to hear you crawl to a creature like that sheriff. You must avoid such things, lest they form a habit.’
Gaston sat still for a moment, and then leaned forward. ‘It irks me, cousin, to hear you put on airs before the King of Alba. But I assume you cannot help yourself.’ He turned, and rode back to his own retinue, and left Jean to ride by himself.
West of Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn was dimly conscious of his body while he sat beneath the giant holm-oak and reached out over the sea of trees. He was aware of himself at the centre; of the fear and anger from the Jacks; the restive arrogance of the qwethnethogs; the mourning of the winged abnethogs; the distant presence that heralded the arrival of the Sossag people from the north, across the wall. He was aware of every tree past its tenth season; of the large patches of iris flowers; of the wild asparagus growing by the river where a man had built a cottage a century before; of the cattle that his raiders had taken to feed the Jacks; of the tuft-eared lynx that was both terrified and angered to have his army camped in its territory, and of the thousand other presences rolling away to the limits of his kenning.
He sympathised with the lynx. Unknowable, powerful creatures with filthy thoughts and polluted bodies, dirty with fear and hate, had come to his woods and fired his camp, terrifying his allies, destroying his trees and making him seem weak. The greater qwethnethogs would question whether he was worthy of service – the very strongest might even waste themselves and their energy on a challenge for mastery.
It was difficult for a Power of the Wild to have trusted lieutenants. But he would continue to attempt such relationships, for the good of the Wild and their cause.
He rose from beneath his tree and walked into camp, scattering lesser creatures and frightening the Jacks. He walked west, to the handful of golden bears who had allied themselves with him and had made huts of brush and leaves. He nodded to Blueberry, a huge bear with blue eyes.
The bear rose on his haunches. ‘Thorn,’ he said. The bears were afraid of nothing, not even him.
‘Blueberry,’ Thorn said. ‘I wish to recruit more of your people. Let me have the child and I will take it to the ice caves.’
Blueberry thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Better food, and females. Well thought.’ Sunset, the largest of the bears, brought the cub. She was small enough for Thorn to carry easily and mewed at him when he took her. He stroked her fur, and she bit at him, tasted his odd flesh, and sneezed.
He left the bears without another word and started north. When he stretched his legs, he moved faster than a galloping horse, and he could travel that fast for as long as he wished. He cradled the little bear and moved faster still.
Before the sun had dipped a finger’s breadth, he was too far from his camp to hear the thoughts of his allies, or to smell the fires of the men who had chosen to serve him. He crossed a series of beaver meadows, enjoying their health, feeling the trout in the streams and the otters in the banks, and he crossed a big stream flowing south from the Adnacrags. There he turned and followed the banks north, into the mountains. Leagues flew by. Thorn drew power from the hills, valleys, water, and the trees. He drew more than power.
He drew inspiration.
War was not his choice. It had been an accident. But if he had to make war now, he needed to remind himself why. He would make war for this. For the wilderness. To keep it clean.
And, of course, for himself. He was growing more powerful with every creature which chose to come and follow him.
The stream began to climb, faster and faster – up a great ridge, and then down, and then up again. He was in the foothills now, and his passage was like a strong wind in the trees. Deer looked up startled. Afraid.
Birds fled.
He knew the valley he wanted – the valley of the creek that the Sossag called the Black, that flowed from the ice caves under the mountains. It was a special place, almost as imbued with power as the Rock.
The bears ruled it.
He climbed a steep path, almost a road, from the stream to the top of the ridge, and waited. He was fifty leagues from his army. He set the bear on the ground and waited.
The sun began to set behind him and he let his mind wander, wondered if the enemy would try to raid his camp again. It occurred to him, now that he was far from the problem, that the enemy captain must have someone watching his camp. Of course. How else would he have known where to attack. He must be using animals as spies.
It was suprising how much clarity he could achieve when he was not bombarded with the chaos of other creatures.
‘Thorn.’
The speaker was old, a bear who had lived more then a century. He was called Flint, and he was acknowledged as a Power. He stood almost as tall as Thorn, and while he had white at his ears and muzzle, his body was strong and firm as a new apple in fall.
‘Flint.’
The old bear reached out and the little bear ran to him.
‘Her mother was enslaved and tortured by men,’ Thorn said. ‘To be fair, she was then rescued by other men, and brought to Blueberry at my camp.’
‘Men,’ said Flint. Thorn could feel the old bear’s anger, and his power.
‘I have burned Albinkirk,’ Thorn said, and realised what a pointless boast it was. Flint would know.
‘With stars from the sky,’ Flint said. His deep voice was like the sound of a rasp cutting into hardwood.
‘I have come to ask—’ Faced with Flint, it was suddenly difficult to explain. Bears were well known for their complete contempt for organisation. For government. Rules. War. Bears would kill when roused. But war repelled them.
‘Do not ask,’ Flint said.
‘What I do—’ Thorn began.
‘Has nothing to do with bears,’ Flint said. He nodded. ‘This is the cub of Sunbeam, of the Clan of the Long Dam. Sunbeam’s brother will no doubt come and avenge her.’ The old bear said this with obvious sadness. ‘As will his friends.’ Flint picked up the cub. ‘They are young, and understand nothing. I am old. I see you, Thorn. I know you.’ He turned his back and walked away.
All at once Thorn wanted to chase down the old bear and sit at his feet. Learn. Or protest his – not his innocence, but his intentions.
But another part of him wanted to turn the old bear to ash.
It was a long walk back to camp.
Lissen Carak – Sister Miram
Sister Miram was missing her favourite linen cap, and she took the moments between study of High Archaic and Nones to visit the laundry. She raced down the steps of the north tower – for a large woman, she was very fast – but then a flash of intuition made her pause at the door to the laundry. Six sisters laboured away, their hands and faces red, stripped to their shifts in the heat of the room. A doz
en local girls worked with them.
Lis Wainwright was also stripped to her shift. Forty years had not ruined her figure. Miram might have smiled, but she didn’t. Beyond Lis were younger girls. Miram knew them all – had taught them. The Carters and the Lanthorns. The Lanthorn girls were simpering. There wasn’t usually a lot of simpering in the laundry.
A hundred nuns and novices generated a great deal of laundry. The addition of four hundred farmers, their families, and two hundred professional soldiers, forced the laundry to boil linen day and night. The drying lines were stretched at every hour, and even senior sisters like Sister Miram received their linens slightly damp and badly ironed. Or left them missing things like caps.
She looked around for Sister Mary, whose week it was to run the laundry, and heard a man’s voice. It was a cultured voice, singing.
She listened intently. Singing a Gallish romance.
She couldn’t see him, but she could see the four Lanthorn girls in their shifts, giggling, preening and showing a great deal of leg and shoulder.
Miram’s eyes narrowed. The Lanthorn girls were what they were, but they didn’t need some smooth-talking gentleman to encourage them on their road to hell. Miram strode across the damp floor and there he was, leaning in the laundry door. He had a lute, and he was not alone.
‘Your name, messire?’ she asked. She had pounced so swiftly that he was locked in indecision – keep playing, or flee?
‘Lyliard, ma soeur,’ he said sweetly.
‘You are a knight, messire?’ she asked.
He bowed.
‘None of these four unmarried maidens is of noble birth, messire. And while it may suit you to bed them, their pregnancies and their unwed lives will weigh heavily on my convent, my sisters, and your soul.’ She smiled. ‘I hope we understand each other.’
Lyliard looked as if he’d been hit by a wyvern. ‘Ma soeur!’
‘You look like a squire,’ Sister Miram said to the young man at Lyliard’s elbow. He also had a lute and while he lacked Lyliard’s dash and polish Miram’s opinion was he’d get there in time. And he was handsome, in a raffish, muscular way.
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