The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  Gawin sneered. ‘It must be all they can do to move these monsters.’

  The wagoners shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  Ser Alcaeus waited until they were past. ‘They float the larger logs on the water.’

  The Keeper nodded grimly. ‘That’s what happened to my bridge.’ He led them down into the dale and they found the foresters hard at work – not local men, but easterners.

  They had cut a swath through the dale, and a dam on the big stream that fed the Irkill. The leader of the woodsman stood in the new clearing, obvious in his long cloak. He had a heavy axe in his hand, gull winged and long hafted, and his wood-cutters were tall and strong, with long beards.

  The Keeper rode up to him. ‘Good day to you,’ he said.

  The man nodded. His eyes were wary. He watched the troop of horsemen – more armoured power than anyone liked to see, especially far from home.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he said. His accent was thick.

  The Keeper smiled pleasantly enough. ‘Pack and leave. Let the water off your dam slowly.’

  The woodsman’s eyes widened and then narrowed. ‘Who are you, then?’

  His men were gathering, and horns were blowing.

  The Keeper didn’t touch his weapons. ‘I’m the Keeper of Dorling,’ he said. ‘You owe me the cost of a bridge, and more. No one logs these dales without my leave – and the time to cut was early spring, when the last snow lies on the ground.’

  The captain swatted a black fly.

  The woodsman frowned. ‘The woods are any man’s, or no man’s. This is Wild Land.’

  ‘No. These Hills are in the Circle of the Wyrm,’ the Keeper said.

  The woodsmen began to gather. Many had spears, and every man had an axe. They were forming.

  Gawin dismounted and, as fast as a dancer, remounted on his war horse. He drew his great sword.

  The Keeper raised his hand. ‘Peace, ser knight.’ He looked back at them. ‘No need for arms.’

  ‘You have wisdom, old man,’ called the leader of the woodsmen.

  ‘You have been warned,’ said the Keeper.

  The woodsman spat. ‘I laugh at your warning. What business is it of yours? And if one of your bridges is swept away by my logs—’ He shrugged. ‘There is wood everywhere. Build another.’

  The Keeper looked around at the crowd of woodsmen. ‘If you remain here, every one of you will die,’ he said.

  They looked unimpressed.

  The Keeper wheeled his horse. ‘Let’s ride,’ he said.

  The Keeper led the way, and they rode at a trot until they were out of the dale and up the next green ridge.

  ‘I feel as if I just ran away,’ Gawin said.

  The captain grimaced. ‘Me, too.’

  The Keeper turned in the saddle. ‘If the Wyrm is of a mind, he’ll kill them all for this, and us, too, by association.’

  That night, for the first time, they camped. There was little grass for the horses, and they had to put nosebags on them and use the oats that the pack animals carried. Mag watched Gawin start dinner and then pushed him out of the way.

  ‘By the good and sweet Christ,’ she said. ‘At least use a clean knife.’

  Alcaeus laughed and took the cook knives to the stream and washed them, scouring them with sand.

  The Keeper rode out with the hillmen and came back with two big turkeys.

  Gawin greeted them with a pair of big trout. ‘I take it there’s not much in the way of angling in these parts,’ he said. ‘Glad I brought a line.’

  Mag looked at the birds and the fish. ‘What you catch, you clean,’ she said. ‘I’m a cook, not a servant.’

  That made the captain laugh. He’d spent the late afternoon building a shelter and digging her a fire pit and now he helped clean the fish with a good grace. They drank the last of the wine by firelight.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the Keeper.

  They rode with the dawn.

  The next range of hills was bare of trees, as if a horde of sheep had clipped them clean – green grass rippled in the wind like a green sea, and the hills rolled away like a greater sea – from the height of their ridge, they could see twenty more ridges spread out like pleats in green wool.

  Mag raised a hand. ‘Is that an eagle?’ she asked.

  Far to the north-east, a great bird rode the air over the hills.

  The Keeper looked under his hand.

  The captain looked too. The great creature was farther away than he had imagined, and he looked and looked until he appreciated what he was seeing, and then his heart beat in pure fear.

  ‘Good Christ,’ said Mag.

  ‘My God,’ said Gawin.

  ‘That’s the Wyrm of Erch,’ said the Keeper.

  It was flying. It was larger than a castle, and it was flying over the hills to the north. Even as they watched, the titanic dragon turned – for a moment its immense and spiky tail was clearly silhouetted against the northern sky, and its huge wings swept out on either side.

  ‘Good Christ,’ Mag said again.

  It was faster too.

  The captain couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  So, Harmodius said in his mind. So. The dead Magus sounded, if anything, more awestruck than the living captain.

  The wind-storm of its wing beats began to echo across the hills. The only sound the captain could imagine like it was the beat of the great mills in Galle – he’d heard them in the low country.

  Whoosh.

  Whoosh.

  It was as big as the hills.

  His riding horse began to panic. Mag’s threw her with a sudden twist and bolted, and all the horses went wild. The captain dismounted, hauled his horse’s head down, and knelt by the seamstress.

  ‘Nothing hurt but my pride,’ she snapped. ‘And nothing much there to bruise.’

  The Wyrm was coming right at them.

  Its wings swept up, their tips almost touching, and then down, and the power of their passage left a swath of matted grass far below as the Wyrm passed over them. It was enormous. The captain was able to count to ten while the immense thing passed over him. His riding horse stood frozen in terror and the dragon’s shadow covered the ground for a hundred paces in all directions – more. It covered the sun.

  He blinked his eyes and looked again.

  Look in the Aether, said Harmodius.

  The captain raised his sight and staggered in renewed awe. If Thorn had been a pillar of green, the Wyrm was – was the sun.

  The captain shook his head.

  Gawin threw his head back and whooped.

  Bad Tom laughed aloud.

  ‘Now that, my friends,’ he said, ‘Is a Power of the Wild, and no mistake.’

  They rode down into the next valley as the rain clouds came on, building to the north over the loch. A series of lochs fell away for leagues – larger and larger, until they merged into a sheet of water twenty leagues or more away. It was a superb view. In front of them, just short of the first loch, was a ford over a burn. They got cloaks off their saddles as they came to the stream. No one spoke much.

  The rain came down like a curtain, sweeping from the north end of the valley, cutting off the view of the lochs.

  Beyond was only rain, and black cloud.

  ‘It’s like the end of the world,’ Mag said.

  The captain nodded. Ser Alcaeus crossed himself.

  They crossed the stream quickly at a cairn. The captain rode off to the side, and then rejoined them. ‘Let’s move,’ he said. ‘The water here rises very quickly and very high.’

  Gawin watched the water. ‘Salmon in that loch,’ he said wistfully.

  On the far side was a narrow track that rose on the hillside. It was just wide enough for a horse, and they picked their way in single file, with the Keeper at the head and Bad Tom last.

  It took them an hour to climb the ridge, and the rain caught them in the open again. It was cold, and they were soaked through despite heavy cloaks and hoods.

  Up,
and up they went.

  At the top of the ridge was a seat of stone facing west.

  The captain looked at it. So did Mag. It held the residue of power.

  The Keeper didn’t stop. He rode down the far side.

  From the very top, just beyond the High Seat, the captain could see the ghostly impression of crags to the north – far away, and gleaming white. Almost everything else was lost in the rain, although they were above it for a few hundred paces, and then they rode back into it.

  Down and down, and trusting his horse. His light saddle was soaked, and he worried for his clothes. For summer, this was cold rain.

  His brain was running wild.

  ‘We’re going to visit that?’ he asked, sounding more like Michael than he would have liked.

  Ranald turned and looked back. ‘Aye.’

  It was afternoon by the time they came out of the bottom of the clouds and could see, through gaps in the rain curtain, another valley of lochs. It was oriented differently – in this one the lochs grew smaller as the valley rose to the east and north, into high crags.

  The Keeper reached the first ford, marked again with a cairn of stones that leaped to the eye in the naked, empty landscape of green grass and rock and water.

  ‘Water’s high,’ he shouted.

  The captain leaned out and watched it for a long minute. They could hear rocks being rolled under the water.

  The stream rushed down a narrow gorge above them, gathered power between two enormous rocks, and shot into the loch on their right – a sheet of water perhaps three hundred paces long and very deep.

  Bad Tom laughed. He roared, ‘Follow me,’ and turned his horse’s head south. He seemed to ride straight out into the loch, yet his horse was virtually dry-shod as he rode a half circle a few paces out from the shoreline.

  The captain followed, as did Ranald. Looking down into the water, he could see a bank of rocks and pebbles just under the water.

  ‘In the spring run-off,’ Ranald said, ‘the force of water pushes all the rock out of the mouth of the stream. Makes a bank – like yon.’ He laughed. ‘Any hillman knows.’

  Tom looked back at the Keeper. ‘Aye. Any true hillman.’

  The Keeper shot him a look, but Tom was immune to looks.

  They started up the valley, wet and feeling surly.

  The trail followed the stream past a magnificent waterfall, and then they climbed the cliff – the trail was just wide enough for an experienced rider to stay mounted, and it cut back and back – nine switchbacks to climb a few hundred feet. Ser Alcaeus’s war horse balked, and would not climb until Ser Alcaeus dismounted, walked back, and fetched him.

  Mag dismounted at a switchback and looked at the captain.

  He understood. She was not going to ask for help. He took her horse by the reins.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  She began to walk up the track.

  He led her horse.

  At the top of the cliff there was another loch. It was smaller, deeper, trapped in narrow cleft and dammed off by the ridge of rock that made the cliff. Above the loch was a long, grassy ridge that rose and rose. Above it all towered a mighty crag, covered in snow – but the snow line was still as far above them as they had come in two days.

  The trail ran along the banks of the loch, in deep grass.

  There were sheep high on the hillsides.

  The only sound was the muted roar of the waterfall coming off the loch behind them, and the distant babble of the stream off the glaciers running into the top of the loch.

  There was a gravel beach at the top of the loch. The captain caught the Keeper and pointed to it. ‘Camp?’ he said.

  The Keeper shook his head. ‘He’s telling us to go away. This weather’s unnatural.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re in for a bad night.’

  The captain was looking through the rain at the distant beach. ‘I see wood there.’

  Mag nodded. ‘I saw rowans up in the highest valleys,’ she said.

  ‘Rowan, alder, and older things,’ agreed the Keeper. ‘We can’t have a fire, this close to the Wyrm.’

  ‘Why not?’ the captain asked.

  ‘The Wyrm has rules.’ The Keeper shrugged.

  The captain shook his head. ‘Taking living wood might incur the wrath of a Power,’ he said. ‘Dead wood on a beach, however—’ He managed a smile and shrugged off the rain. ‘There’s an overhang there. Gather all the horses against it to break the wind.’

  The Keeper shrugged. ‘On your head be it. If we turn back now, we can have better weather before sunset.’

  Gawin rubbed water out of his moustache. ‘Tell me why we didn’t camp by a loch with fish?’ he asked.

  The captain looked out over the rain-swept sheet of water. ‘I’d bet a golden leopard to a copper there’s salmon in this water,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t be the man to catch one.’

  Gawin smiled. ‘You don’t know much about salmon, brother, if you think they can climb a hundred foot of falls.’

  ‘My bet stands,’ the captain said. ‘But to catch one would be a deadly insult to our host, and as the Keeper has noted, he’s not in love with us at the moment.’

  Mag cackled. ‘So worried about a bit of wet. I’m twice the age of most of you, and I can roll up in a wet cloak and sleep. My joints will cry in the morning, but what of it? I saw a dragon fly in the dawn.’ She looked at them. ‘I’m not turning back, gentles.’

  They constructed a shelter from spear poles and heavy wool blankets, pinned down with the biggest rocks on the beach. The wind tested it for a while, but didn’t seem interested in a real contest.

  The captain rode off with Ser Alcaeus, and together they roamed the long beach and picked up every stick on it – it made a respectable woodpile.

  ‘And where’d it come from, I’d like to know?’ asked the Keeper.

  The captain shrugged. ‘Our host put it out for us to find, I expect.’

  Gawin, a practised hunter, took a fire kit from his pack and looked at his brother across the fire pit. ‘Like being boys again,’ he said.

  ‘We never tried to light a fire in a storm like this,’ the captain said.

  ‘We did, too,’ said Gawin. ‘I couldn’t get it lit, you used power, and Pater cursed you.’

  ‘You’re making this up,’ the captain said, shaking his head.

  Gawin gave him the oddest look. ‘No,’ he said. He used his body and his soaking cloak to cover the fire pit, and the captain’s quick hands laid a bed of twigs – damp, but dry as drift wood ever is. Gawin put a bed of dry tow from his fire kit inside a nest of birch bark.

  ‘Bark from home,’ he said.

  The captain shrugged.

  Gawin laid charred linen deep in the tow, and then struck his fire steel against a small shard of flint until spark flew. The char-cloth lit, he dropped it into the nest in his hand, and blew. Smoke billowed out. He blew a second time, a long, slow breath, and more smoke came.

  The captain leaned over and blew.

  Before his breath was out, Gawin blew, and the whole nest burst into flame. Gawin dropped it onto the waiting twigs, and both men added more, and more – speed and accuracy embodied.

  In two cracks of lightning, they had a fire.

  Maggie laughed. ‘You could have just magicked it,’ she said. ‘Instead of showing off with your woodcraft.’

  Gawin frowned.

  The captain smiled. ‘I avoided the use of power for many years.’ He shrugged. ‘Why waste it?’

  She nodded, understanding.

  They made tea from the water of the loch, ate cold meat, and curled up to sleep. The stones of the beach were cold and wet, but the wool tent and the warmth of the horses won out in the end.

  They took watches in turns. The captain took the mid watch, and he sat high above the beach on a rock. The wind was gone, and with it the rain, and he watched a thousand thousand stars and the moon.

  May we talk?

  No.

  You’ve closed your door
and you aren’t responding to Mag and she’s confused. You are linked to her. The courtesy of mages requires you—

  No. The captain looked out over the loch. Go away. Not at home.

  His head hurt.

  In the morning, they drank hot tea, ate fresh Johnny cake made in ashes on a flat rock by Mag, and rode on. The horses were tired and cold, but by a miracle none of them were lame or sick despite a cold night on a mountainside. They followed the trail up over the green ridge at the north end of the loch, down into a shallow, high valley of green turf with the stream ripping through, full of rain water. From there down a rocky course at the centre, and then they cut back twice, riding up another ridge. The green of the hills was deceiving – what looked like one endless ridge proved to be a succession of them, one merging to another in the grey light.

  The Keeper shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like this the last time,’ he said.

  Ranald laughed. ‘Never the same twice, is it, Keeper?’

  The Keeper shrugged. ‘This is only my second trip, Ranald.’

  Bad Tom grunted. ‘Never been, meself. But Hector said it was different every time.’

  Up and up.

  They climbed the next ridge as the sun struggled through the curtain of cloud, and at the top of the next ridge, in a fold of the earth, sat a shepherd’s cot with a curl of peat-smoke coming out of a low chimney.

  Sheepfolds extended right out from the walls of the stone house, as if the whole place were built for sheep.

  The trail led from their ridge to the door of the shepherd’s cot, straight as a lance.

  ‘Biggest sheep I’ve ever seen.’ Alcaeus was rubbing the water out of his hair.

  They rode down the track. The stone wall by the cot had a gate with richly worked iron hinges and the captain leaned over and opened it.

  On the far side, hidden by the crest of the hill, was a brick horse barn. It had eleven stalls.

  The captain grinned. ‘I’ll take this as a sign we’re welcome,’ he said.

  The brick horse barn looked very out of place.

  ‘I know this barn,’ Gawin said. ‘This is Diccon Pyle’s barn.’ He looked at Ranulf, who nodded.