From the east came a party of painted men; Akra Crom of the Abenacki led them. They had harried the suburbs of Albinkirk, taken a hundred prisoners, and were now ready to go home. Such was the way of the Outwallers – to raid and to slip away. Akra Crom was as old as a man could be and still lead Outwaller warriors – his skin betrayed his age. He was hairless, painted a metallic grey that gleamed like silver in the light. He was the rarest of Outwallers – a possessor of power. A shaman, warrior, and a great song-maker among his people, the old man was a living legend.
Exrech was the chief paramount of the gwyllch that men called bogglins. His thorax gleamed white, and his arms and legs were a perfectly contrasting ebony black, as was his head. He was as tall as a man and power flickered around his mandibles, far more pronounced than a lower-caste gwyllch; his natural armour was better, and his chain mail, carefully crafted in the far East and taken in war, had been riveted carefully to his carapace to join the living armour. He carried a pair of man-made great swords in his two large hands and wore a horn at his waist.
Thorn was pleased they had come, and he offered wine and honey.
‘We have taken heavy losses, and suffered costly victories and humiliating defeats,’ Thorn began. He left it there – the fact of defeat.
‘The Sossag have won a great victory in the east,’ said the painted man. The other warriors with him grunted their approval.
‘They have, at great cost,’ Thorn nodded. Overhead, the stars were rising – a spectacular display of light in the blue-black sky of late evening. But their meeting was not illuminated by fire. Few creatures of the Wild loved fire.
Thorn pointed at the heavens. ‘The Sossag and the Abenacki are not as numerous as the stars,’ he said. ‘And many Sossag fell at the Crossings of the Otter.’
Exrech’s jaws opened and closed with a firm click indicating waste of valuable warrior stock; not easily replaced; no clearly defined target. Strong disapproval.
Akra Crom shrugged. When you rule the Outwallers, you may choose their wars.
The black and white gwyllch lord gave an acrid spray of anger. In deep woods, all soft-skins alike to we.
Thorn grunted and both lords settled down.
Thurkan spoke, his daemon voice high and badly pitched – a shock from such a large and beautiful creature. ‘I blame you, Thorn.’
Thorn had not expected a direct challenge and began to gather power.
Thurkan reached out a long forearm and pointed. ‘We each act under your order – but we do not mesh. We are not together. No gwyllch stand with the Sossag. No gwyllch climb with the Abnethog when we fly against the Rock. Abnethog and qwethnethog and gwyllch fight the same foe in the same woods, but no creature goes to the support of the other. The hastenoch died with gwyllch a few hands away.’
Thorn considered this – full of power, ready for the challenge that criticism usually led to, he was not at his most rational.
‘You have armed yourself against me,’ whined the great daemon. At least, his every utterance sounded like a whine. ‘Yet I challenge you not, Once Was Man.’
Thorn let some of the power he had gathered dissipate.
Faeries had been attracted, as they always were by raw power, their slim and elegant shapes flitting suddenly through the air where his release of power glowed a virulent green.
Mogan plucked one from the air and ate it, and the faeries’ death-curse filled the night as the little thing vanished down her gullet.
Exrech nodded. Strong one. Well taken.
Jack of Jacks shuddered. To most men, the killing of a faery was sacrilege. He spat. ‘Thorn, we are here for one reason only. You promised us you’d defeat the aristocrats. For that, we have gathered every bow from every farm. Our people suffer under our lords’ hammers this summer so that we can defeat them. And yet, the king’s army comes closer and closer.’ Jack scowled. ‘When will we fight?’
‘You are a deadly secret, Jack of Jacks.’ Thorn nodded. ‘Your long shafts will be the death of many a belted knight, and your men – you said yourself they must stay hidden. They will emerge from decades in the shadows at the right moment, when we play for everything. I will face the king and his army on ground of my choosing. You will be there.’
He turned to the qwethnethogs. ‘I am guilty of sending each of you to fight your own foes in your own way. This still seems wise to me. Between gwyllch and Outwaller there is no friendship. The Jacks have no love for any creature of the Wild. Every beast in the woods fears the qwethnethog and the abnethog.’ He ate a dollop of honeycomb. ‘We should have triumphed by now, and I feel the strong hand of fate on the rim of our shield. I command that you all take more care.’ He’d lowered his voice and imbued it with power from the air around him and the store he held for emergencies, and even so the daemons challenged him.
‘Obey me, now. We will not fight the king at Albinkirk. We let our early victory spread us too far, dissipate our strength. Let Thurkan watch the king and eat his horses. No more. Let Exrech withdraw from Albinkirk. Offer no battle. Let the Sossag and the Abenacki fall back to their camps here. Let the Jacks sharpen their bodkins. Our day approaches, and the king will never reach Lissen Carak.’
Thurkan nodded. ‘This is more to my liking,’ he hissed. ‘One mighty fight, and a rending of flesh.’
Thorn forced a piece of a smile – it seemed to crack the flesh around his mouth – and all but the daemons quailed. ‘We will scarcely need to fight,’ he said. ‘But when they have fought among themselves, you may rend their flesh to your heart’s content.
Thurkan nodded. ‘Such is always your way, Thorn. But when it comes to teeth and spears I do not like having the Cohocton at my back.’
Thorn hated being questioned, and his anger rose. ‘You fear defeat before a single spear is cast?’
The great daemon stood his ground. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have seen many defeats, and many empty victories; my hide bears the scars, and my nest is empty where it should be full. Both of my cousins have died in the last moon – one on the spear of the dark sun, and one with his soul ripped from him by their cruel sorceries.’ He looked around. ‘Who will come to my aid? You expect treason – and I agree that humans are born to betray each other. But many will fight, and fight bitterly. This is their way! So I say – who will come to my aid?’
‘Have you finished whining?’ Thorn bellowed.
Jack squared his shoulders. ‘If it is your unshared plan that the mighty daemons face the king then my comrades and I will be honoured to share the danger with our scaled allies.’
Thorn wanted to scream in frustration. My plan is my plan is my plan. I will not share it with the likes of you. But he narrowed his eyes, banished the bile from his great heart, and nodded.
‘Then gather more boats, and prepare to cross the river. This time, protect them. For unless the king is a great fool, he will advance on the south side of the river, as my brother Thurkan fears. Yes? And if you are hard pressed, I will send gwyllch, at least the lighter kind, who can pass the river.’
Exrech spat a clear fluid. Waste of resources; conflict of interest.
Thorn took a deep breath, and pushed power into his word.
‘Obey,’ he said.
By the time the fireflies came out, the clearing in the woods was empty.
Lorica – Desiderata
Desiderata sat on her throne in the Great Hall of the castle of Lorica, still dressed for travelling. She had a dozen minor issues on which to pronounce justice, and all she wanted was dinner and bed. Taking a train from Harndon to Lorica in a day was harder work than she’d expected.
She worked her way through the cases – the murder of a draper by a woman, the theft of a herd that trailed off into accusations and counter-accusations by the monks of two rival abbeys – and then there was a messenger.
He wore the royal scarlet and midnight blue livery, and even covered in road dust it commanded instant attention.
He was young and not particularly handsome, and y
et had an air about him. He knelt at her feet and presented a bag.
‘The king sends to you, my lady,’ he said formally.
She didn’t know him, but word of war had made the king increase every part of the household – an action that would affect the royal budget for ten years to come.
‘Royer Le Hardi, my lady,’ the messenger said.
‘The news?’ she asked.
‘All is well with the army,’ Royer replied.
The Queen took the pouch and opened it, cutting her husband’s seal carefully and opening the lead wafers that secured the buckles with the small knife she always wore in her girdle.
There were four scroll tubes holding about a dozen folded and sealed letters – she saw letters to the Emperor of Morea and the King of Galle – and a thick packet with her name on it in his handwriting, which she snatched up.
She read a few lines and frowned. ‘My lords, ladies, and good men and women,’ she said formally, rising to her feet. ‘I will hold court in the morning, and all cases are held over until then. The seneschal and sheriff shall attend me, as will my own lords.’ She smiled, and many in the multitude at her feet smiled back, so personable was her smile.
The hall’s chamberlain smacked the floor with his staff. ‘The Queen has dismissed the assembly,’ he said, in case there were those who didn’t understand.
Before the last draper had cleared the portico the Royal Steward and the King’s Treasurer – were at her side. ‘News?’ asked Bishop Godwin. Lord Lessing – a banker promoted to the aristocracy by the old king – rubbed his beard.
She tapped the cover note against her teeth. ‘We will continue north to join the army,’ she said. ‘If we have a tournament at all, at this rate it will be in the face of the enemy, at Albinkirk or even Lissen Carak.’ Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
Her king’s note sounded desperate, and he had ordered her not to come.
‘Strip this town of carts,’ she said. ‘I will leave everything that I don’t need – I’ll take four maids. No state gowns, no frippery, no clothes. You, my lords, should stay here. You will form the government.’ She paused. ‘No. Go back down the river to Harndon.’
The bishop breathed a sigh of relief.
‘I might be gone a month,’ she said. ‘Or more. I may stay with the king until the emergency is past. Lord Lessing, I would take it as a kindness if you would organise the supply convoys as I have been doing.’
Lessing pulled at his beard. He had gold wire in it, which somehow served only to make it look greyer. ‘I will do your will, Lady,’ he said gravely. ‘But some of those wagons need to start coming back. We have stripped the southern kingdom bare and I doubt that there is even a wheeled cart to be had in Harndon. If they are lost, the harvest will rot in the fields.’
‘Best they not be lost, then,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll see to it that the wagons I’ve sent north are turned around – either empty, or full of the northern harvest.’
‘Boats,’ Lessing said suddenly. ‘If he’s aiming for Lissen Carak, you should go by boat. The docks here are full of empty hulls – Master Random of Harndon’s boats. He’s arrayed a mighty fleet of river boats to buy the grain harvest in the north. It’s supposed to be a secret, I admit. But I had it from his wife, and you can go faster by oars and sail up the river. And it’s safe as houses – never yet heard of a boglin as could swim. Eh?’
She loved her lords because they weren’t going to try to stop her, and because both of them began immediately to plan for the practical details of her trip to join the army.
After they’d made a dozen lists and summoned half the prominent men of Lorica to witness deeds and to become commissioners of this and that, she collapsed at last into the best bed in the royal keep of Lorica.
Mary stripped off her silken cote hardie, her kirtle, her shift, and the man’s hose she’d worn underneath so she could ride astride. ‘You will take me with you?’ Mary asked.
‘You and Emmota, Helena and Apollonasia,’ the Queen said languorously. ‘And Becca.’
‘Bath?’ Mary asked.
‘Perhaps the last for many days,’ the Queen said. ‘Oh, par dieu, Mary, we are about to break free of it all and have an adventure.’
Lady Mary smiled at her mistress. But her eyes had no smile in them, as if she was looking far beyond their room.
‘Do you still think of him?’ the Queen asked her First Maid.
‘Only when I’m awake,’ Hard Heart admitted. ‘And sometimes when I’m asleep.’
‘He is not with the army.’ Desiderata had received two missives from her husband that included the name of Gawin Murien, but in both his whereabouts was unknown.
‘I will be closer to him,’ Mary said. She sighed. ‘I didn’t know that I loved him until the king sent him away.’
Desiderata held her Mary for a few tears, and thought of her husband’s letters.
He was worried. That came through, either despite his foolish banter or because of it.
He needed her there. To remind him who he was.
She fell asleep thinking of Mary and Gawin, and awoke to find that she was the admiral of a fleet of forty river boats, twenty oared boats with sturdy masts and slab sides, capable of a turn of speed and a heavy cargo. By the time the sun was above the river banks, her flotilla was pulling north, and the townsmen were glad to see the backs of the rowers, who had made more trouble than a dozen companies of soldiers. Despite her plans she’d ended up with all of her ladies, a set of pavilions, and a cargo of armour and dried meat for the army. And a company of Lorican guildsmen in horrible purple and gold livery; crossbowmen who had, to the man, never been out of the town before. They were the only soldiers that the bishop could find.
‘Give way, all!’ called the timoneer.
She lay back under the bright sun, dressed in white, and let the sun turn her hair to gold.
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.’
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