The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  They all nodded.

  ‘You planning to take a nap?’ Bad Tom asked.

  The captain smiled at the Abbess. ‘My lady and I are going to raise a nice fog,’ he said. ‘She is a very potent magus.’

  He had the pleasure of watching her eyes widen in surprise.

  Jehannes paused. ‘And you? Captain?’

  ‘I am a modestly talented magus.’ He nodded to his new constable. ‘Ah, Michael. Please don’t go anywhere.’

  The other officers rattled out, Michael stood uncomfortably by the door, and after a moment it was just the three of them.

  ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ the Abbess asked.

  Michael writhed. ‘I love her,’ he said.

  She smiled, to his shock.

  ‘That is the best answer you could have given, under the circumstances. Will you wed her?’ she asked.

  The captain made a noise.

  Michael stood straight. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What a dashing young fool you are, to be sure,’ said the Abbess. ‘Who’s son are you?’

  Michael’s lips tightened, so the Abbess beckoned to him, and he came to her side. She leaned forward, touched his forehead, and there was a magnificent burst of colour and sparkling shards, as if a sunlit mirror had shattered.

  ‘Towbray’s son,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I knew your father. You have twice the looks and twice the grace he ever did. Is he still a weak man who changes sides with every twist of the wind?’

  Michael stood his ground. ‘Yes, he is,’ he said.

  The Abbess nodded. ‘Captain, I will take no action until our war is resolved. But what I say now, I say as a woman who has lived at court with the great. And as an astrologer. This boy could do much worse than Kaitlin Lanthorn.’

  Michael looked at his captain, whom he feared more than ten abbesses. ‘I love her, my lord,’ he said.

  The captain thought of the note in his gauntlet, and of what the Abbess had just said – he’d felt the power of her words, which had bordered on prophecy.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘All the best romances bloom in the midst of a good siege. Michael, you are not so much forgiven as pardoned for this. Your pardon does not include further tumblings of said girl in my solar. Understood?’

  The Abbess looked long and hard at the squire. ‘Will you marry her?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said the squire, defiantly, bowed and left the room.

  The captain looked at the Abbess and grinned. ‘And the sisters will go with her? They’ll liven up castle life, I have no doubt.’

  She shrugged. ‘He should marry her. I can feel it.’

  The captain sighed. And sighed again when he realised that there was no one to help him disarm.

  ‘Shall we go and make fog?’ he asked.

  She extended her hand. ‘Nothing would please me more.’

  Lissen Carak – Bad Tom

  Bad Tom stared at the captain’s steel-clad back, slim as a blade, as he squired the Abbess down the corridor to the steps. Jehannes made as if to pass him, and Tom put his arm up and blocked him.

  They glared at each other, but if they had had fangs they’d have been showing.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t like taking orders from a boy,’ Jehannes said. ‘He’s a boy. An inexperienced boy. He’s hardly older than his squire. That gifted young man.’ He spat.

  ‘Give it a rest, I said.’ Tom spoke with the kind of finality that starts fights, or sometimes ends them. ‘You were never going to be captain. You haven’t the brains, you haven’t the hard currency, and most of all, you haven’t the birth for it. He has all three.’

  ‘I hear the boy almost lost the castle because he can’t keep his hands off some nun. He was off billing and cooing while you were out with the sortie. That’s what I hear.’ Jehannes leaned back and crossed his arms.

  ‘You know what makes me piss myself laughing when I watch you?’ Tom leaned forward until his nose was almost touching the older man’s nose. ‘When he issues his orders, you just fucking obey like the trained dog you are. And that’s why you hate him. Because he’s born to it. He’s not new at this, he’s the bastard of some great man, he grew up in one of the big houses, with the best tutors, the best weapons masters, the best books, and five hundred servants. He gives orders better than I do, because it’s never occurred to him that anyone would disobey. And you don’t. You just obey. And later, you hate him for it.’

  ‘He’s not one of us. When he has what he wants, he’ll go.’ Jehannes looked around.

  Tom leaned back, shifted until his shoulders fitted neatly along a line of stone. ‘That’s where you are wrong, Jehan. He is one of us. He is a broken man, a lost soul, whatever crap you want to call us. He has everything to prove, and he values us. He—’ Tom spat. ‘I like him,’ he said. And shrugged. ‘He’s a loon. He’ll fight anyone, anytime.’

  Jehannes rubbed his chin. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘All I ask,’ said Tom. He didn’t do anything obvious, but a subtle shift of his hips cleared the corridor. Jehannes stood straight, and then, quick as thought, his rondel dagger was in his hand – poised at shoulder height.

  ‘Not planning to use it,’ he said. ‘But don’t threaten me, Tom Lachlan. Save it for the archers.’

  The knight turned and walked away, sheathing his dagger easily.

  Tom watched him go with a slight smile on his lips.

  ‘Catch all that, young Michael?’ he said, levering his giant form upright.

  Michael blushed.

  ‘Not for his ears – hear me? Men talk. Sometimes with their bodies, sometimes like old fishwives. Not his business.’ He looked at Michael, who was not quite cowering in the doorframe.

  But Michael was afraid, yes, but also determined. ‘I’m his squire.’

  Tom rubbed his chin. ‘So you get to decide some things. If you hear two archers talking about stealing from a third, would you peach?’

  Michael managed to meet his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And talking about raping a nun?’ he asked.

  Michael held his eye. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And talking about how much they hate him?’

  Michael paused. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘He’s not their friend, he’s their captain. He’s pretty good at it, and he’s better every day. But what he don’t know won’t hurt him. Get me?’ Tom leaned in close.

  ‘Yes.’ Michael didn’t back away. He tried to stand tall.

  Tom nodded. ‘You’ve guts, young Michael. Try not to get dead. We might make a man-at-arms out of you yet.’ He grinned. ‘Nice, that little chit of yours. Best act quickly if you want to keep her for yourself.’

  Out in the yard, a dozen archers and a pair of squires were gathered around a girl, and they were all furiously peeling carrots.

  Lissen Carak – Father Henry

  The priest watched the sell-swords come out of their leader’s room. The captain, the source of infection. She came out first, and the Bastard was holding her hand like they were lovers. Perhaps they were – if he was an imp of Satan then pleasuring an old whore would be just his mark. Aristocrats. Birds of a feather.

  Bile flooded his throat, and his hands shook a little to think that he had – he had—

  He ducked his head to avoid looking at them, and went back to his sermon. But it was a long time before his hands were steady enough to scrape the old parchment as clean and thin as he needed it to be.

  And when the biggest of the sell-swords came down the steps, he caught the priest’s eye and smiled.

  Henry felt fear go through him like a wave of cold and dirty water. What did the man know?

  He got up from his work-table as soon as the giant walked off, and he slunk across the chapel to the prie-dieu in the chapel. Reached under the altar cloth to make sure it was still there. His war-bow. His arrows.

  He sagged with relief, and hurried back to his work table, imagining one of his shafts in the giant’s gro
in. Listening to him scream.

  Dormling – Hector Lachlan

  The fast horsemen hadn’t learned enough to change Hector’s mind. He looked at the rough sketch of the country and shook his head. ‘If I go east, I’d as well take my beasts over the mountains to Theva,’ he said. ‘And I don’t intend to do that. I have customers in Harndon and Harnford waiting for their cattle. West of the mountains, there’s no way to pass a few thousand head except the road.’

  The Keeper had spent the night dancing and drinking his own ale as well as some nasty foreign spirits and his head was pounding. ‘So wait here and send a message to the king,’ he said.

  Lachlan shook his head. ‘Sod that. I’ll be away in the first light. What can you give me, Keeper? How many men?’

  The Keeper grimaced. ‘Perhaps twenty helmets.’

  ‘Twenty? You have a hundred swords here, wasting your money and standing about idle.’

  The Keeper shook his head in turn. ‘The Wild’s coming,’ he said. ‘I can’t just drift away like some. I have to hold this place.’

  ‘You can hold this place with thirty men. Give me the rest.’

  ‘Maybe thirty like you – thirty heroes. Normal men? I need sixty.’

  ‘So now you’ll give me forty? That’s better. Forty brings me near a century strong – enough to watch both ends of the herd and still leave a sting in my tail.’ Lachlan looked over his sketch. ‘When we come down out of the hills, it’ll be worse – I’ll want horses. So I’ll take fifty of your swords and two hundred head of horses.’

  The Keeper laughed. ‘Will you now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. For a third of my total profit.’ Lachlan asked.

  The Keeper’s eyes widened. ‘A third?’

  ‘Of the profit. In silver, payable when I’m standing on your doorstep on my road home.’ Lachlan was smiling as if he knew the punch line to a secret joke.

  ‘And nothing if you’re dead,’ said the Keeper.

  ‘I confess, paying my debts won’t matter so much to me if I’m dead,’ Lachlan answered.

  The Keeper pondered a while. The tall serving woman came in, and the Keeper was surprised to see that nothing but the blandest of smiles passed between them. He’d been sure the dark-haired woman was the drover’s type.

  ‘I need your trade, and you’re a well-known man,’ the Keeper said. ‘But you’re trying to take all my horses and half my fighting strength on a wild-haired adventure with little profit and a great deal of death.’ He rubbed his head. ‘Tell me why I should help you?’

  Lachlan kicked his sword blade around his chair and sat back. ‘If I told you I was going to make the greatest profit in my family’s history by getting this herd through to the south—’ he said.

  The Keeper nodded. ‘Sure, but—’ The drover’s cheerful arrogance annoyed him.

  ‘If I said that success would leave the king in my debt, and open new markets for my beef,’ Lachlan said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the Keeper said.

  ‘If I said I lay with your youngest in the night, and she carries my son in her womb, and that I’ll do this for her bride price and be your family?’ Lachlan said.

  The Keeper sat up, rage crossing his face.

  ‘Don’t you lose your temper with me, Will Tollins. She came to me free, and I’ll wed her and be happy on it.’ But Lachlan put his hand on the hilt of his sword just in case.

  The Keeper held his eye. And they sat there, diamond cut diamond, for a long time.

  And then the Keeper smiled. ‘Welcome to my family.’

  Lachlan held out a great hand, and the other man took it.

  ‘Forty-five swords, and all the horses I can raise by tomorrow, and I get half your profits – a quarter for my own and quarter for Sarah’s bride price. And you wed her today.’ He had the drover’s rough hand in his own, and he felt no falsehood in it.

  Hector Lachlan, the Prince of the Drovers, withdrew his hand, spat and held it out, and Will Tollins, the Keeper of Dormling, took it, and the Inn of Dormling rang to a second night of revelry.

  On the next morning, Lachlan led his tail and all his herds out onto the road into the watery sunlight. Every man had a shirt of shining rings, every ring riveted closed on a forge, every hauberk fitted to its wearer over a heavy cote of elk hide quilted full of sheep’s wool, and every man had a heavy bow or a crossbow, a sword at least four feet high to the cross, and some had axes as tall as they themselves were, over their shoulders. Every man had a tall helmet with a brim that kept the rain off your face and a sharp point at the top, and a cloak of furze, and long leather boots like leather hose that went to the hip. The Keeper’s men wore hoods of scarlet with black lines woven in, so that they made a check of red and black, and Lachlan’s men had a more complex weave of red and blue and grey that made a colour that seemed to change with the trees and the rain. And Sarah Lachlan stood in her father’s door-yard with a wreath of spring jasmine in her hair, kissing her man again and again while the flame of her hair lit the morning like a second sun. Her former suitor, the farmer, stood in the watery sun with a great axe on his shoulder, determined to go and die rather than face life without her.

  Lachlan put an arm around him. ‘There’s other girls, lad,’ he said.

  Hector Lachlan took his great green ivory horn and put it to his lips and blew, and the deep note sounded up the vale and down it to the Cohocton, over leagues of ground. Deer raised their heads to listen, and bears paused in their orgy of spring eating, and beavers, surveying the dams broken by the spring rains, looked up from calculations. And other things – scaled and taloned, chiton brown or green – raised their heads and wondered. The horn call rang from hillside to cliff edge.

  ‘I am Hector Lachlan, Drover of the Green Hills, and today I set forth to drive my herd to Harndon!’ Hector shouted. ‘Death to any who oppose me, and long life to those who aid me.’ He sounded the horn again, and kissed his new wife, and took a charm from around his neck and gave it to her.

  ‘Wish me luck, love,’ he said.

  She kissed him, and gave him not one tear. But she looked at her father defiantly and was shocked to find him smiling back.

  Then Hector crushed her to his burnie, and then he was walking out the gate. ‘Let’s go!’ he shouted, and the drive lumbered into motion.

  West of Albinkirk – Gerald Random

  Gerald Random scratched his head for the tenth time that morning under his linen coif and wished that he could stop his convoy for long enough to wash his hair.

  The Magus rode by his side, all but asleep in the saddle. Random couldn’t help looking at him with the same proprietary air a man might look at a beautiful woman who’s suddenly consented to sleep with him. Having the Magus by his side was incredible luck, like a tale of errantry come to life.

  The convoy was down a wagon this morning – the farrier’s cart had been parked badly, had sunk in the rain and both oxen’s throats had to be slit. The farrier himself was dry eyed, as his tools had been distributed among forty other carts and he’d been promised a place on the return. Altogether it was a small loss, but the whole column was exhausted, and Random was, for the first time, seriously considering turning around and going back south. The total loss of the convoy was a risk he could not really afford – his financial losses if the convoy failed but the stock survived would merely set him back ten years. But if it was destroyed, he’d be ruined.

  And dead, you fool, he thought to himself. Dead men never become lord mayor, nor sheriff.

  Set against that, he’d brought them through an ambush and one straight-up fight and last night most of them had snatched a little sleep. He was reasonably sure that, with the Magus at his side, they could cut their way to the fair at Lissen Carack.

  But what if they arrived to find no fair? The farther north-west they went, the less likely it seemed that there was a fair at Lissen Carack. Or even a convent.

  On the other hand, going back seemed both craven and dangerous. And the old Magus had been very c
lear: he was going to Lissen Carack, not back down the river to the king.

  He scratched his itching head again.

  He was seven leagues west of Albinkirk, if his notions of the road were accurate. About two days travel to the fords of the Cohocton, and another full day at oxen speed up the north side to the Convent.

  The sun rose fully and the sky was truly blue for the first time in three days. Men’s clothes dried, they warmed up, and the chatter of a well-ordered company began to spread. Men ate stale bread and drank a little wine, or small beer if they had it fresh, or hard cider if not, and the column rolled briskly along.

  The soldiers were twitchy – Old Bob had a dozen mounted men spread a hundred horse-lengths wide in the trees ahead of the wagons, and the rest covered the rear in a tight knot ready to charge in any direction under Guilbert.

  They didn’t stop to eat a noonday meal, but rolled on.

  When the sun was well down in the sky, Old Bob rode back to report that they were coming to one of the turn fields, the cleared fields maintained specifically for the fair convoys to camp.

  ‘Looks like hell,’ he said. ‘But it has fresh water and it’s clear enough.

  In fact, raspberry prickers had grown up over most of the field, and while one small convoy seemed to have made camp there a few days before, they had stayed to the edge by the road and cut no brush.

  Guilbert sent his men out into the raspberry canes in armour, to cut armloads of the stuff with their swords, and he had the archers lash them in bundles on the sturdy Xs of a pair of fascine horses, cradles made of heavy logs where armloads of brush and prickers could be wrapped tight. In the last three hours of daylight, while the boys cooked and brought in water and the older men saw to the animals and circled the wagons, the soldiers build a rampart of raspberry cane bundles.

  And then, the evening being dry, they set fire to the rest of the field. The canes went up like dried wood, burning into the edge of the trees in a few minutes.

  The Magus came awake to watch the sparks rise into the clear night air.