The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Ser Gabriel managed a smile. “Yes. Many things could be worse. Mater and I seldom saw eye to eye.”

  “You saved me,” Desiderata said again. “I will never forget it.”

  Ser Gabriel chuckled. It was a dark sound with no pleasure in it. “Can I tell you something?” he asked. He was cutting the apple into slices.

  Blanche suspected that they’d forgotten she was there, but as a servant to royals, she was used enough to the feeling. But the Red Knight’s manner scared her.

  The knife paused on the apple.

  “Yes, if you will,” Desiderata said.

  “My mother wanted me to be King,” he said.

  Desiderata’s breath was loud.

  The small eating knife rested against the apple’s skin. And cut.

  “It is the deepest irony,” the Red Knight said, “that on the very night of her death, I have you and your babe under my hand.”

  He reached out, a piece of apple pressed to the knife blade by the pressure of his thumb. The knife blade passed within a fraction of an inch of the Queen’s mouth and all but rested on her cheek as he pressed the apple slice between her lips.

  The Queen’s eyes were locked on his.

  Sweet Christ, he seemed so nice.

  Blanche was moving, but she was too far away.

  “You never wanted to be King,” Desiderata said. If the knife troubled her, she didn’t give a sign. Blanche’s lunge was checked by the pail of water, over which she tripped.

  Both heads turned. The Red Knight rose, cut the last piece of apple in half, gave the Queen one part and ate the other himself. He shook his head. “The world is an odd place, your grace,” he said. “Nothing is what it seems, and few things worth having are easy to have. I suppose there is a man who, finding the power of Alba under his horse’s hooves on the road, would abandon everything he’s ever done to make himself King.” He bowed, but somehow his glance collected Blanche. He gave her a hand and helped her up. “The Queen is in no danger from me, Lady Blanche. I am not my mother.”

  Desiderata smiled—and it was like her old smile, full of a woman’s provocative wisdom. “But you wanted me to know,” she said.

  The Red Knight shrugged. “I suppose. There’s no one else to share the jest save Blanche. Lady Blanche, I’ll fetch you some food.”

  “I’m not a lady,” she hissed at his back. Her heart was beating very fast.

  She had really thought he was about to kill the Queen.

  When he was gone, the Queen’s face sagged. “Oh, blessed Virgin, give me strength,” she said. She managed a tired smile at Blanche. “Oh, he scared me, too, Blanche.” She looked around. “We need a Royal Standard, Blanche.”

  Blanche laughed. “Your grace, I’m a fine hand with a needle, but even I couldn’t run up a gold dragon tonight.”

  She held a cup of water for her mistress to drink, and used a cleanish spot on her kirtle to wipe the Queen’s lips. “Sleep, your grace. I don’t think he’d actually… but I’ll still attend you.”

  “Nonsense, my dear. Go sleep. He’s not as dangerous as he—”

  Ser Gabriel came in. He had a tray this time—a tray which proved to be an archer’s leather and steel buckler full of bread and cheese and apples.

  He motioned to Blanche.

  She looked at the Queen, but her eyes were already closed. Her babe lay on her breast with his eyes tightly shut and mouth slightly open.

  Blanche glanced back at the Red Knight, who beckoned her. She shut the door to the Queen’s chamber behind her. There was a small stall—probably the abode of a favoured riding horse—just off the passage. He had a camp stool and an upturned barrel there and he set the food down.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “I’m not gentry,” she said. “You don’t have to waste your fine manners on me.”

  “Alas, once started they’re very hard to turn off.” He sat on a leather trousseau rather suddenly, as if his knees had given way.

  “Does all your chivalry extend to terrifying my mistress, then?” she asked.

  He looked at her. His eyes were queer in the darkness—almost like a cat’s. He took out a knife—the same knife—and began to cut another apple into slices. He held one out to her and she took it without thinking and ate it. The apple was tart and hard despite a winter in a cold cellar, and she could not stop herself from seizing the next two slices he offered, greedily.

  His mouth made a strange shape—neither smile nor frown. “Sometimes, things need to be said, between people of power,” he said. “Even between lovers, or parents. Things that show intent, or honesty. Or simply draw a line, for everyone’s peace.” He sat back, so his face was hidden, except his odd eyes.

  It occurred to Blanche that he was giving her a real answer. It was like when her mother had first spoken to her as a woman. Heady stuff. She was alone with him. She suspected his motives. But he was interesting.

  “You had to tell her that you could kill her and be King?” she asked. She was into the cheese.

  So was he. “Do you think she’d rather go to sleep wondering what was on my mind?” he asked. “Or knowing?”

  Blanche chewed. “Depends,” she said.

  “Too true,” he said. “The bread’s stale.”

  “I’ve had stale bread before,” she said, and took a slice. It was good bread, if a day or two old. “We lived in Cheapside.”

  He poured wine into a somewhat crumpled silver cup. “We’ll have to share,” he said. “I tried to find Wilful’s cup, or Michael’s, but I couldn’t in the dark.”

  She murmured a prayer and drank. The wine was dark red and had a lovely taste, almost as if it had cinnamon in it, with a little sweetness.

  “Does your company always eat and drink this well?” she asked.

  His teeth flashed. “Good food and good wine recruit more men—and women—than silver and gold,” he said. “When Jehan and Sauce and I started the company, we agreed we’d always have good food.” He said, “My father always fed his men…” And stopped, his face working. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and she wondered if he was laughing, but she thought perhaps—not.

  She rose to her knees and handed him the wine cup. He took it carefully—so carefully that he didn’t touch her. Blanche was used to a more forward kind of boy and dismissed her earlier suspicions of his intentions.

  She wondered what it would be like to be his mistress. Was he rich? He was likely to be the Queen’s captain for some time. He had nice manners—nicer than the court gallants she’d known.

  She almost giggled aloud at such an absurd fantasy. Blanche, the laundry mistress, was more like her speed.

  “You drank all the wine!” he said in mock annoyance. He had cried, then. Odd man. And now, like all men, sought to pretend he hadn’t.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

  “You tell that to all your boys,” he said.

  She blushed, but it was dark. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” she said. “I should go look at the Queen. The wine was very good.”

  “Your servant, Lady Blanche,” he said.

  He rose—for a moment she thought he might…

  Then he was past her, holding the door. “Since you tumbled the last bucket,” he said wryly, “I’ll draw another before I rest.”

  He came back with the bucket, and with Nell, who had a straw palliasse over her arms and her boy in tow. The two of them made her a bed at the foot of the Queen’s. Nell looked well pleased—Blanche, in passing, plucked a straw out of her hair. Diccon, her young man, was diligent in avoiding his captain’s glance.

  The Red Knight nodded, and went out the door.

  Blanche fell onto her pallet and was asleep before she could think.

  Gabriel fell into the straw next to his brother. Gavin muttered something. He’d been kind enough to leave room and two blankets. Gabriel refused to think about Ticondaga or all the errors he’d made—because if he stayed awake mourning, the morrow would be worse.

&n
bsp; He closed his eyes. Smiled at a thought instead of weeping, and went into his palace of power. There—in the cold, clear world of the aethereal —he could work his own sleep.

  “You need to sleep,” Pru said.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

  He cast a simple working, using only two symbols and one statue. Pru’s hands moved, and he was asleep.

  “Gabriel—they want you. Gabriel—get up!”

  Gabriel surfaced slowly. His self-imposed working was strong enough to keep him down unless he made an effort of will. The effort of will broke the working, but it also brought him a flood of images.

  “Ohh,” he said. He moaned. “Oh, noooooo.”

  Mater, dead. Ticondaga—destroyed. Thorn, triumphant. The Queen. Amicia.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Sorry.” Gavin was shaking him. “It is Dan Favour, from Gelfred, and he says it has to be you.”

  “Fuck,” he said again. He sat up. His eyes filled with tears and he banished them as best he could.

  He rose from his blankets in shirt and hose and climbed over the rest of his lance and his casa sleeping in a small loft. Nell cursed him. Gavin had a taper lit and handed it to him.

  “I’m going back to sleep,” he said.

  Gabriel wished he had that power. Instead he went down a ladder and then out to the main area of the barn, where long lines of men and women lay in rows on straw bundles or pallets. The barn was a cacophony of snores and heavy breathing.

  The outside air was sharp and cold. He saw Ser Danved in full harness, standing watch with his lance by the road. Cully was dressed. He was buckling his sword belt while he talked to young Favour, who was head to toe in a dark green that looked mostly black in the fitful torchlight.

  Cully gave a sketchy salute. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he said. “But you ha’ to hear this your own sel’.”

  Favour knelt on one knee. “My lord,” he said. “Ser Gelfred ordered me to find you—he sent ten of us out. We have the main column formed as you ordered, south of Lorica.” He looked at Cully. “But there’s already an army on the roads—Galles and Albans and much of what’s left of the Royal Guard. More’n a thousand lances, my lord.”

  Cully had the captain’s case, and he unrolled a map. It was not very accurate, because it had been designed merely to give a traveller distances from various towns to Harndon.

  “At last light, de Vrailly was at Second Bridge,” Favour said.

  “Get to the bad part,” Cully said.

  Favour cleared his throat. “There’s banners with de Vrailly,” he said. “Towbray’s banners.”

  Gabriel struggled to be awake. “Towbray? He’s in the dungeons—”

  “Ser Gelfred picked up a couple of royal archers yester e’en,” Favour said, his eyes on Cully. “Looking for new employment, they said, as the Earl of Towbray had sworn fealty to de Vrailly.”

  Gabriel nodded. “That could be,” he said. “Wake Ser Michael.” He frowned.

  Lord Corcy appeared out of the darkness. “Towbray—that snake,” he said.

  Gabriel would, in that moment, have preferred almost any other man awake rather than the old Alban lord, who was possibly an ally but not yet proven. But there was no crying over spilled milk. “Towbray has a passion for changing sides, I agree,” he said.

  “His presence will cement the loyalty of many of the southern barons,” Corcy said.

  Gabriel stared into the darkness, and then down at his map. He measured a distance—Second Bridge to Lorica.

  “How long for you to reach Gelfred?” he asked.

  Favour bowed. “Before daylight. I swear it.”

  Ser Michael appeared from the barn. He looked the way Gabriel felt.

  “Your pater’s with de Vrailly,” he said bluntly.

  Michael froze.

  Gabriel watched him carefully.

  “Idiot,” Michael swore.

  Gabriel found that he’d stopped breathing for a moment, and now he breathed again. He put his arms around Michael. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve gotten knocked around the last few hours—it’s as if the pillars of the earth have been knocked over.”

  Michael spat. “I came here to rescue him,” he said.

  “He refused to go with Ser Ranald, two days back,” Favour said. “I’m that sorry, Ser Michael, but we was—not best pleased. He was the only royal prisoner to turn us down.”

  “That idiot,” Ser Michael said. He looked at his captain and shrugged. “So?”

  “Officers,” the captain said.

  Blanche was awakened to find Nell leaning over her.

  “Wake up, girl!” Nell said. “Get the Queen up!”

  The babe awoke and, finding the world changed, challenged it with a yell.

  Outside, a brazen trumpet rang out a long call.

  The barn seemed to explode into motion. Once, as a child, Blanche had seen her mother find a nest of mice in a chest in their garret. As soon as she touched it, mice ran in every direction, making her mother scream.

  This was like that, except that the mice were unkempt men and women.

  At the door, an archer stopped Nell.

  “We attacked?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Nell spat, and pushed past him, looking for horses.

  Nothing had been packed well in the exhausted darkness. The cursing from beyond the door was fluent and very descriptive. Blanche might have admired it, but she had all her damp laundry to pile into a basket thrown through the door by Nell’s boy.

  The babe was louder than the trumpet.

  Sister Amicia awoke—if she had been asleep. She picked the baby off her mother’s lap as soon as it finished feeding and began to bounce it. She grinned a very un-saintlike grin at Blanche.

  Blanche got the Queen bathed—just a sponge and lukewarm water—and into a shift that hung on her like a sack. Then she put the Queen in the same gown she’d worn the day before—the white gown of a bride or a penitent sinner. The gown in which the Queen would have been burned.

  “Don’t fuss,” Desiderata said, taking her baby back from Amicia. “Don’t fuss. If we’re moving now, there’s a reason. Be quick, Blanche. Leave anything you cannot carry.”

  Blanche frowned, thinking that it wouldn’t be the Queen’s problem if Blanche had no clothes and no clean swaddling for the baby.

  But again, Nell appeared to save her. She had Blanche’s palfrey of the day before in the small stall just outside the door, and she had a donkey. Cully, the master archer, stood by the donkey.

  “Just gi’ me your baskets,” he said kindly. “I’ll see ’em onto the animal.”

  Blanche favoured him with a smile. She knew she must look a fright, but there was nothing she could do—no bath, no clothes, no nothing.

  The saddle on her palfrey was worth more than her whole wardrobe had ever been worth, and she wondered whose it had been.

  Cully tightened a belt and set the tine of the buckle, and gave a tug at the laundry basket. It didn’t move.

  “You ha’ any trouble with this animal, call me, my lady,” he said.

  “I’m no lady,” Blanche said.

  Cully grinned. But he said nothing, and then he was through the great double door of the barn.

  “Archers—on me! Fall into the left with your horse to hand.” He took his bascinet—as fine as many a knight’s—off the pommel of his saddle and pulled the aventail over his head.

  An archer brushed past her and his hands tried most of her body as he went past. The man leered back at her.

  Blanche’s right hand caught him just above his eyebrow and slammed him against the doorpost.

  Another archer laughed. “She’s a quick ’un, Cat!” he said. He grinned at Blanche, who glared.

  Then the trumpet rang again, and armoured figures poured into the great barn’s yard. Pages scurried by with horses—chargers and riding horses, sometimes as many as three horses to a page. The men-at-arms began to mount.

  She got the Queen up on an
other palfrey brought by a page she didn’t know. That page was also a woman, a pleasant, dark-haired woman old enough to be Nell’s mother.

  “They call me Petite Mouline,” she said in an Alban deeply accented with Occitan. “The cap’n says that this ’orse is for the lady Queen, yes?”

  Petite Mouline had a fine breastplate and her maille was dark and well oiled over a bright red arming coat. Her smile was warmer than the horse. “Oh, the petit bébé!”

  The Queen emerged from her birthing room with the sister at her elbow, and she put a dainty foot into her stirrup and leaped into the saddle with a vitality that belied the last few hours.

  Amicia mounted her own horse more carefully.

  In the stone-flagged yard, Bad Tom’s voice—as loud as Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet—put the company—or rather, the fragment of the company with them—into order.

  The Red Knight was in full harness. Outside, the moon was small and bright—bright enough to cast shadows on the ground and to light his shoulder armour in a dazzle of complex reflections.

  He bowed to the Queen. “Your grace, I cry you pardon me. De Vrailly has moved faster than I expected.”

  “We must run—I understand.”

  He smiled. “Well, your grace, as to that—” He turned as Lord Corcy came up.

  “I’m with you, my lord,” Corcy said. “I must get home, collect my harness and the men I can trust. I hope you’ll agree to let the sheriff and his men disperse.”

  “I’m afraid I must ask you all to come with us for a few leagues,” the captain said.

  Corcy nodded. “I was afraid you’d see it that way. I beg you to reconsider. These men won’t betray you until pressed. I will swear any oath you name.”

  The Queen reached out and took Lord Corcy’s hand. “I accept your word, my lord. Go, and return.”

  “We’ll just keep your son as our guest,” the captain said.

  He and Corcy exchanged a long look, and Blanche thought there might be blood, but Corcy bowed. “Very well, my lord. Adam, remain here with these gentlemen. Where will I find you, sir?”

  The Red Knight—in his proper colour, visible even in moonlight—nodded. “North of Lorica, and moving quickly,” he said. “We’ll have de Vrailly at our heels.”