‘Amen!’ said Padry fervently and took refuge in the wine.
He felt curiously at ease with himself. Nagging voices in his head told him that perhaps he should be with the King, at prayer, or walking among the soldiers, encouraging them in the King’s name. Perhaps there were around him men who even now would profit from a few words about the Angels. Perhaps his own soul would benefit from a short period of quiet meditation. But these thoughts only made him the more comfortable. He found that he rather enjoyed the wickedness of it – squandering these last hours in the company of a man who knew nothing of the Path, but whose ease and humour were a blessing in this long and horrible night when one could do nothing but wait for sleep that would not come, and for the distant dawn.
‘There used to be an inn in this country,’ said Hawskill. ‘No, I tell a lie. It was between here and Tuscolo – a day or more from here, where road forks south for Jent—’
‘I know it. They have rebuilt it.’
‘Have they? I must go and look. But if the landlord is the same I will not touch his wine no matter how cheap he sells it. I swear the damned stuff smoked when he uncorked the bung. And in one mouthful I had so much grit I must take another to spit the first out with! If the trade of the landlord is to cheat his guest blind, that fellow was the master of it…’
And so the hours passed, in story after story. Padry told a few of his own. Hawskill listened. And at the end of each one, or maybe even before, he would nod and say, ‘Aye, that puts me in mind of…’ and off he would go on another, yet more gross or obscene than his last, and chortling ‘Hoh-hoh-hoh’ as he drew breath. Around them the night deepened and the murmur of the camp diminished. Horses called shrilly to one another. But even these sounds grew fewer. Every now and then there came the flash and thump of Gueronius’s cannon, still battering at the walls of Trant. No one remarked on it now. Men were lying all around them, low shapes wrapped in blankets, faceless, but for now still breathing under the stars.
Around midnight, or perhaps some time after, a loud groan sounded from nearby. It was a pitiful, anguished sound, of a soul that could not sleep and could not tear itself from the thought of tomorrow. Padry looked up, wondering who it had been. Hawskill checked in the middle of another story and lifted his head to listen.
‘That’s the grief of the young, you see,’ he said. ‘They expect too much of themselves.’
Padry followed the jerk of his chin towards the tent of the knight Delverdis. There, in those coloured folds, a man lay with his mind consumed with horrors. Padry could feel sorry for him. Very probably the lad had never seen a fight before. Now he was waiting for the moment for which he had been raised and was feeling unequal to it. Padry wondered what the King was doing: whether he was asleep or awake; calm, or fevered with guilt and the burning caress of his wound.
‘How do you think it will go tomorrow?’ he said softly.
Hawskill pulled a face. ‘Sometimes you can tell before it starts. Sometimes you can’t. The King’s got to break through to Trant. That’ll be hard – across the stream with the other bank held against us. If you fall in that, you’ll drown. And it’s easy to fall in the mud and the press. If you’re attacking you can’t hold your formation. If you’re defending you can. If we don’t break through …’ Hawskill frowned. ‘What’s Gueronius going to do? He’s still banging away at Trant. So he must reckon that the wall’s about to go. If it does go, maybe he can take the castle before we can get to it. Even then he must deal with us. He’ll have to come to us then, so the boot will be on the other foot. And at the same time he must block Lackmere if he can’t bribe the man to stay away. All in all, I’d rather be where we are than where Gueronius is. By a whisker, perhaps.
‘Of course,’ he added, ‘if just one of us gets close enough to Gueronius to knock him on the head, it’ll all be over in a trice.’
Padry nodded. It was a cheering thought, up to a point. Gueronius would certainly be in the thick of it, wherever that might be. Angels above! It might even be that he, Thomas Padry, would have the chance to bash out the brains of his former pupil – brains he had once tried to fill with matters other than war. He did not relish the idea. Mainly he did not relish it because he knew that if the two of them came face to face it would, saving a miracle, be Padry’s brains that would be left leaking from his skull.
‘And the same if Ambrose is killed, I suppose,’ he said. Then he wished he had not.
‘Oh, certainly.’ Hawskill looked into his bowl. He seemed to have finished it. He picked up the wine bottle and weighed it. There must have been some left, but not much. ‘All things come to an end, I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘Enough talk. I thank you for your company, Master Chancellor. But let me be by myself now.’
XXXII
The Son-eating
adry woke in a grey, chilly dawn. The air was misty, the ground he was lying on hard and cold.
He sat up. He thought no profound thoughts. He found that he had slept in his cloak on the bare grass. He was still wearing his mail shirt and under it his padded leather jacket. His skin was clammy with cold sweat. His boots were on his feet. His bladder was full and his head throbbed.
All around him men were stirring, picking themselves up, shaking off the night. Bread was being broken and passed hurriedly around. Things were being crammed into knapsacks, horses led past. Calls sounded here and there on the hilltop. The campfire had burned to cold ash.
He needed water. But first he needed to get rid of it. There was no privacy on this crowded campsite, but who needed privacy today? The eyes that saw him might soon be staring sightless at the sky. He got to his feet, found his round iron helmet and put it on his head. He picked up his great mace and blundered down the hill a little way so that the greyness might make him more anonymous. From the sights and sounds around him he was not the only one. Of course not. Men were men, food-gobblers and piss-squirters all, until they stopped breathing.
He hitched his mail shirt up, got his hose down and did what he had to do. Then he reassembled himself. Thirsty but complete, he climbed back up the hill.
He could not see far in that light. The sun might or might not have been up – there was no telling. Low clouds had rolled in during the later part of the night. The lake was veiled. So was the bottom of the valley on the inland side and the rise of the far ground. Looking along the ridge, Padry could just make out the stand of oaks where the King had his tent. It loomed like a little low cloud in the greyness. The castle of Trant was hidden. So were all signs of the enemy. Padry could not remember when he had last heard the cannon. The army might have been all alone on its hillside.
Hawskill was standing by the blackened circle of the campfire, calling for the Pemini men to assemble.
‘Water, Master Chancellor?’ he said, holding out a flask. ‘Drink well, for it will be a long day.’
‘My thanks,’ said Padry. He gulped at it, made to pass it back, and then remembered what Hawskill had just said. He drank some more.
A lump of bread was put into his hand. He looked at it and saw how filthy were the fingers in which he held it. Then he bit into it anyway. A few yards away the young knight Delverdis was standing, wooden-faced, while his attendants fastened bits of plate armour over his mail. He saw Padry looking at him and turned his head to stare out across the lake.
‘Here, Pemini!’ Hawskill bellowed. ‘Let’s have you now!’ Men were shouldering into a loose body around them. The air creaked with leather and rattled with pikes and helmets and spiked or flanged maces like Padry’s own. Twenty paces away a band of men in lighter armour, carrying crossbows, had begun to assemble.
‘One of Trant’s towers fell last night,’ muttered Hawskill.
‘Oh! Which?’
Hawskill shrugged.
‘Has Gueronius stormed it?’
‘Not yet. But the King will attack early in the hope that we can prevent him.’
‘Michael guard him – and us.’
‘Amen to that.’ And: ‘Com
e on, you lazy pigherds! Where are you?’
Hooves churned on mud. A huge warhorse was being led up, with drapes of white and yellow and metal plates strapped to its head and chest. They were helping the knight Delverdis into the high saddle. A lance was being held up. The knight groped for it, half blinded by his helmet. His mailed fist closed around it. The horse blew and carried him ponderously forward, towards the grove of oaks which was now showing a little more clearly at the end of the ridge. Other knights of the north passed, coming up from their tents and campsites to gather around the King. Hawskill watched them go, frowning.
‘They’d do better on foot, maybe,’ he muttered. ‘Depending on what’s waiting at the stream.’
‘A horse can ford where a man cannot,’ said Padry hopefully.
‘That’s true. All the same …’
Peering ahead, Padry could see another mass of men and horses forming between him and the stand of oaks. That was Develin’s men-at-arms. He could see the chequered banner of the lady, the red squares just dark and colourless in this wretched light. They, too, were mounting. He wondered where the lady herself was. The lady, and the King, and somewhere away in the mist, Gueronius, too. All old pupils of his. Not much luck, these pupils of yours, have they? And a kingdom in play between them.
Hawskill, too, was looking ahead of him, eyeing the gap between Pemini and Develin.
‘We’ll have to close up,’ he said. ‘Forward, Pemini.’
And ‘Steady there!’ as the armed townsmen began to surge forward like eager hounds. ‘Keep formation, damn it!’
In two great masses, bristling with pikes, they began to trudge along the ridge. The crossbowmen accompanied them, scattered left and right in no order at all.
‘Where’s Watermane?’ asked Padry.
‘Oh, they’ll come along in their own good time,’ said Hawskill.
There must be some instinct that forbade a commander from looking behind him, thought Padry. Look round and all your men will look over their shoulders, too. And once they do that, they’ll be a moment away from running themselves. But he could not stop himself from glancing back. Others were doing so as well.
‘They’re coming,’ said someone.
Beyond the heads and pikes of the second Pemini company, another mass of figures was moving towards them along the ridge. Distrustfully Padry kept looking until he could make sure of the banner of the Leaping Fish, Watermane’s emblem, wavering over the men behind. Then he fixed his eyes forward.
It was as good as it could be, he told himself. There were two well-armoured battles ahead, between him and the enemy. And there were two more packs of stout lads behind, in case Gueronius suddenly came charging out of the mist and fell on their rear. The lake lay to his right, guarding him from that direction. He had mail on his back, a helmet on his head and a mace in his hand. Now, come all or come nothing, he must make himself ready.
‘Halt,’ called Hawskill. ‘Crossbows, to the left of the battle, there.’
‘What’s the delay?’ said a voice.
What was the delay? Twice in the next hour the column ahead – the knights of Develin – started forward, and twice they halted. Thinly through the mist the Pemini men heard the voices of hundreds of men and horses, crying aloud. They could see nothing. They could not hear the clash of steel or the splash of mud and water as the knights of the north fought to cross the stream. They could only hear the shouting, on and on, as though some giant cock-fighting pit had opened down in that dip below the grove of oaks.
It faded.
Later, after another march of fifty yards, it began again. They strained their ears, listening, trying to guess from the sounds whether the King’s battle was surging up the far slope towards the castle walls or was still struggling in the mud and drowning in the shallow water before the unbroken spears of their enemies. Padry thought of the King, and also of the young knight of Delverdis. He muttered a prayer for both of them. He wondered if it would be in time for either.
‘What’s that?’ said someone.
‘Something’s happening. They’re dismounting, look.’
Ahead of them, on the end of the ridge, the mass of Develin men-at-arms was changing shape. Men and horses were milling. Attendants were leading horses away. The men-at-arms were gathering into a tight, well-armoured battle under a small forest of spears.
‘They’re going to fight on foot,’ grunted Hawskill. ‘So. Either the King’s calling them forward, or—’
‘Captain!’
To the left, and slightly downhill, the crossbowmen of Pemini were calling, pointing away into the mist. A dozen voices broke out at once.
‘Quiet! Quiet all!’
Padry held his breath, listening. Ahead, the sounds of the fighting had died again. (What had happened down there?) The battle of Develin was facing left now. And from the left…
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Quiet, damn it!’
A clinking noise, as of many little pieces of metal stirred by the wind. Unmistakable. A column of armed men was moving to the left of them. Padry could not tell if it was approaching or marching parallel to the line of the King’s army. He waited for it to become clearer. Long moments passed and it did not. He swore under his breath.
They must be enemy. They could only be Gueronius’s men. Padry felt a sudden hollowness in his stomach. He gulped.
‘Face to the left, Pemini,’ called Hawskill. ‘Pikes to the fore!’
For a moment all was chaos. Padry stood still, not knowing what was required of him. Men scurried and shoved past him. The pikemen, who had massed at the head of the column, hurried round to the left flank and spread themselves along the face of the reordered battle. Hawskill yelled and yelled at his men, pushing the crossbowmen off to left and right of the main body. Armoured figures clutched their maces and axes nervously, staring down the long green slope into the mist. And …
‘There!’
A stir among the ranks, as though of a vast beast hackling up at the sight of a challenger. Down in the valley bottom, men were moving. They were spread thinly, almost like a party of landsmen innocently gathering wood. But those things in their hands were crossbows, not sticks. And beyond them a denser mass was coming into view: a column of armed men under pikes and banners. Further off were horsemen – knights, from the size and weight of the shadows in that mist. And appearing to Padry’s right was another body of foot, pressing down the line of the stream to find the King’s flank as he contested the crossings.
Padry pulled at Hawskill’s arm. Inspiration had seized him. For a moment he, Thomas Padry, was master of the day.
‘There will be a gap,’ he gabbled. ‘If they keep to those lines of march, a gap will open for us in the middle! We could—’
‘They won’t,’ said Hawskill.
Even as he said it the column below them halted. They had seen the King’s army on the ridge. The crossbowmen swung towards them, some running to space themselves out to the best advantage. Beyond them the main column struggled to order itself. Hawskill eyed it coolly.
‘Green, I’d say,’ he said. ‘Green, but eager. We’ll see.’
The enemy mass was still ordering itself, seething and wobbling as it stretched to match the line of Pemini. Padry tried to guess their numbers. Fifteen hundred? Two thousand? He gave up. He tried to pick out the banners but they were obscure in the mist. He set his teeth and shivered, cursing the enemy for being so slow.
He badly wanted to empty his bladder again.
They were coming at last. It was most obvious with the crossbowmen, because he could see them singly. The massed column behind them seemed only to shiver at its edges with the movement of many legs. But it, too, was creeping forward across the short flat ground at the bottom of the valley. It was beginning to climb.
Thunk! went a crossbow a few paces to his left. And then thunk-thunk-thunk! as other Pemini bows tried the range. It was just like the first few drops of rain, heavy and threatening before the deluge. H
is eye could not follow the bolts. They flitted darkly and were lost in the mist. Was that a man down already? Or had he only slipped? The enemy bowmen were still coming on. They could not reply yet – the slope was against them. But very soon they would. Behind them the main enemy battle was crawling closer. How long now? Only a few minutes. Yet it already seemed an age that he had been standing here, watching them come. Why couldn’t they be quicker?
Another man had fallen. That was good shooting. The enemy were raising their bows now …
‘Heads down, boys,’ said Hawskill.
And now there was nothing for it but to look at his feet, hunch his shoulders, point his helmet to the bitter sky. Now the bolts were falling among the Pemini men. The air hissed. He heard the rattle of points on metal. Green the enemy might be, but those crossbowmen knew their job. With the Pemini bowmen picking them off one by one, they still aimed their shafts into the mass of pikemen on the ridge, trying to loosen it, unsettle in, goad it into movement, so that it would be soft and disordered when their own pikemen charged into it. And Padry could do nothing but lean into the flight of arrows, one foot forward, staring at the ground and trying to make himself as small as possible under his helmet. Something clanged off a man to his right and bounced against his mailed elbow. Both men swore. A bolt should not pierce iron. But an exposed face, a shoulder-joint or foot … Leather was no help at close range. And the range was closing. The bolts were coming in more levelly. Someone barked with pain.
‘Steady, Pemini,’ called Hawskill. ‘Wait for it.’
‘Pemini for the King!’ cried Padry, still hunching his shoulders. ‘Give a cheer, boys, for the King!’
‘The King! The King!’ they roared. He could feel them stirring around him like hounds on a leash. Instinct screamed at them to hurl themselves down the slope. Training demanded that they lock in their places until the last moment. Away to the right there was a sudden surge of shouting as the battle of Develin closed with its enemies.
‘The King! The King!’ bellowed Padry.
The Fatal Child Page 37