The Red Knight ttsc-1

by Miles Cameron

  The captain winced at the word trust. He leaned towards her – she smelled of olive oil and incense and soap – and had to fight the urge to put his hands on her hips, her waist-

  She cocked her head a little to one side. ‘Don’t even think it!’ she said, sharply, but without raising her voice.

  His cheeks burned. ‘But you like me!’ he said. It seemed to him one of the stupidest things he’d ever said. He gathered himself, his dignity, his role as the captain. ‘Tell me why you always fend me off?’ he asked, his voice controlled, light hearted, and false. ‘You didn’t fend last night.’

  She met his look, and hers was serious, even severe. ‘Tell me why you curse God on rising?’ she asked.

  The silence between them lasted a long time, during which he even considered telling her.

  She took his left hand and started to unwrap the bandage. That hurt. A little later, Tom opened one eye. The captain did not particularly enjoy watching him admire her hips and her breasts as she moved with her back and side to him.

  He winked at the captain.

  The captain did not wink back.

  After she’d put a oregano poultice on his hand and wrapped it in linen, she nodded. ‘Try not to seize the sharp bits when fighting grim beasts in future, messire,’ she said.

  He smiled, she smiled, their silence forgotten, and he left feeling as light as air. It lasted all the way down the steeply turning stairs, until he saw the twenty-three tight-wrapped white bundles under an awning in the otherwise empty courtyard.

  In the aftermath of the battle, the Abbess had ordered all of her people to stay indoors. No one would sleep in the open air, no matter how balmy and spring-laden it was. Services were held in a side chapel – the main chapel was now sleeping quarters.

  He passed under the arch to his Commandery, and found Michael, who was busy writing, with Ser Adrian, the company’s professional clerk. Michael rose stiffly and bowed. Adrian kept writing.

  The captain couldn’t help but smile at his squire, who was obviously alive and not one of the bundles in the courtyard. His face asked the question.

  ‘Two broken ribs. Worse than when I tried to ride my father’s destrier,’ Michael said ruefully.

  ‘In a business where we take daring and courage for granted, yours was a brave act,’ the captain said, and Michael glowed. ‘Stupid,’ the captain continued, putting a hand on the young man’s shoulder, ‘and a little pointless. But brave.’

  Michael continued to beam with happiness.

  The captain sighed and went to his table, which was stacked high with scrolls and tubes. He found the updated roster. It was due the first of every month, and tomorrow was the first of May.

  Why had he even considered telling her why he cursed God?

  People were often stupid, but he wasn’t used to being one of them.

  He read through the roster. Thirty-one lances – thirty, because Hugo was dead and that broke his lance. He needed a good man-at-arms – not that there seemed to be any to be found in this near wilderness. There must be local knights – younger sons eager for glory, or for a little cash, or with a pregnancy to avoid.

  The whole stack of paperwork made him tired. But he still needed men, and then there was the Wild to consider as well.

  ‘I need to talk to Bad Tom when he’s well enough. And to the archers from last night. Who was most senior?’ he asked.

  Michael took a deep breath. The captain knew he was testing the bounds of the pain against the inside of the bandage with that breath – knew this from having broken so many ribs himself.

  ‘Long Paw was the senior man. He’s awake – I saw him eating.’ Michael rose to his feet.

  The captain held up a hand. ‘I’ll see him with Tom. If he can leave the infirmary.’ His hand was throbbing. He initialled the muster roll. ‘Get them, please.’

  Michael paused, and the captain swallowed a sigh of irritation. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What – what happened last night?’ Michael shrugged. ‘I mean, all the men feel we won a great victory, but I don’t even know what we did. Beyond killing the wyverns,’ he said, with the casual dismissiveness of youth.

  The captain felt like yelling, We killed two wyverns, you useless fop. But he understood the boy’s attitude, albeit unspoken.

  The captain sat carefully in a low backed folding chair made of a series of arches linked at the base – it was a beautiful chair with a red velvet cushion which welcomed him, and he leaned back. ‘Are you the apprentice captain asking? Or my squire?’

  Michael raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m the apprentice captain,’ he said.

  The captain allowed the younger man a small smile. ‘Good. Tell me what you think we did.’

  Michael snorted. ‘Saw that coming. Very well. All day we sent out patrols to gather in farmers. I didn’t realise it at the time, but more patrols went out than came back.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Good. Yes. We’re being watched, all the time. But the creatures watching us aren’t very bright. Do you have any of the power?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I studied it but I can’t hold all the images in my mind. All the phantasms.’

  ‘If you capture a beast and bend it to your will, you can look through its eyes – it’s a potent phantasm but it is wasteful. Because you must first overcome the will of another creature – a massive effort, there – and then direct that effort. And in this case you must do so over distance.’

  Michael listened, utterly fascinated. Even Ser Adrian had stopped writing.

  The captain glanced at him, and the clerk shook his head and started to get to his feet. ‘Sorry, ‘he mumbled. ‘No one ever talks about this stuff.’

  The captain relented. ‘Stay. It is part of our lives and our way of war. We use scouts because we don’t have a magus to use birds. Even if we did I’d rather use scouts. They can observe and report, can make judgments as to numbers, can tell if they see the same three horses every day. A bird can’t make those judgments, and the magus’ perceptions of whatever the bird sees is filtered through – something.’ The captain sagged. ‘I don’t know what, but I imagine it as a pipe that’s too small for all the information to get through, as if everything is seen through water or fog.’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘The Wild has no scouts, so I guessed that our enemy was using animals as spies. We have trapped a lot of birds, and then I misled him.’ The captain crossed his hands behind his head.

  ‘And with cook fires. You told me so.’ Michael leaned forward.

  ‘Gelfred isn’t down at the Bridge Castle, not much anyway. He’s out in the woods, watching their camps. He has been since we realised the bulk of the Wild army had gone around us. Want to talk about brave? I sent patrols out with a weapon – something the Moreans make. Olive oil, ground oil, whale oil will do – bitumen, if you can get it, plus sulphur and saltpeter. There’s dozens of mixtures and any artificer knows them. It makes sticky fire.’

  Michael nodded. The clerk crossed himself.

  ‘Even the creatures of the Wild sleep. Even the adversarius is just a creature. And when they gather to attack men – well, it stands to reason that they must have a camp. Do they talk? Do they gather at campfires? Play cards? Fight amongst themselves?’ The captain looked out of the window. ‘Have you ever thought, Michael, that we are locked in a war without mercy against an enemy we don’t understand at all?’

  ‘So you’ve watched them, and attacked their camp,’ Michael said with satisfaction. ‘And we hit them hard.’ Now Michael was smiling.

  ‘Yes and no. Perhaps we didn’t touch them,’ the captain said. ‘Perhaps Bad Tom and Wilful Murder put some fire on some meaningless tents, and then they followed our boys back and hit us harder – killing twenty-three people for the loss of just two wyverns,’ the captain said.

  Michael’s smile froze. ‘But-’

  ‘I want you to see that victory and defeat are a question of perception, unless you are dead. You know every man and woman in the company �
� in this fortress – feels we won a great victory. We fired the enemy’s camps, and then we killed a pair of his most fearsome monsters in ours.’ The captain got to his feet as Michael nodded.

  ‘And because of this perception, everyone will fight harder and longer, and be braver, despite my fucking mistake to allow civilians into the courtyard which cost us twenty-three lives. Despite that, we’re winning.’ The captain’s eyes locked on Michael’s. ‘Do you see?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘It wasn’t your fault-’

  ‘It was my fault,’ the captain said. ‘It’s not my moral burden – I didn’t kill them. But I could have kept them alive if I hadn’t been distracted that evening. And keeping them alive is my duty.’ He stood up straight and picked up the baton of the command. ‘Best know this, if you want to be a captain. You have to be able to look reality in the eye. I fucked their lives away. I can’t go to pieces about it, but neither can I forget it. That’s my job. Understand?’

  Michael nodded and gulped.

  The captain made a face. ‘Excellent. Here endeth the lesson about victory. Now, if it is not too much trouble, I’d like Long Paw and Bad Tom, please.’

  Michael stood and saluted. ‘Immediately!’

  ‘Harumf,’ said the captain.

  Long Paw was fifty, his once red hair mostly grey and a mere tonsure around a bald pate, with an enormous moustache and long sideburns so that he had more hair on his face than on his head. His arms were unnaturally long and despite his status as an archer and not a man-at-arms, he was reputed the company’s best swordsman. The rumour was he had once been a monk.

  He clasped hands with the captain and grinned. ‘That was a little too exciting.’

  Bad Tom came in after him, a head taller than either the captain or the archer, his iron grey hair curiously at odds with his pointed black beard. His forehead had a weight of bone that made his head look like the prow of a ship, and no one would call him a handsome man. He looked scary, even in broad daylight, dressed in nothing but a shirt and an infirmary blanket. He clasped hands with the captain and the archer, grinned at Ser Adrian, and settled every inch of his gigantic frame into one of the arched chairs.

  ‘Good plan,’ he said to the captain. ‘I had fun.’

  Michael slipped in. No one had invited him, but his face suggested that no one had told him he couldn’t come, either.

  ‘Get us all a cup of wine,’ the captain said, which indicated that he was welcome enough.

  When five horn cups were on five chair arms, and when Ser Adrian had his lead poised to write, Tom tasted his wine, leaned back and said, ‘We hit ’em hard. Not much to say – worst part was getting there. The lads was fair skittish, and every shadow had a boglin or an irk in it, and I thought once I was going to have to cut Tippit in half to shut him the fuck up. So I leaned over him-’

  Long Paw grinned. ‘Leaned over him with that giant dagger in his fist!’

  ‘And Tippit pissed himself,’ Bad Tom said with evident satisfaction. ‘Call him Pishit from now on.’

  ‘Tom,’ Long Paw cautioned.

  Tom shrugged. ‘If he can’t cut it he should go weave blankets or cut purses. He’s a piss poor archer and one day he’s going to get a man killed. Anyway, we rode most of the way there, and we moved fast, ’cause you said-’ Bad Tom paused, obviously at a loss for the words.

  ‘Your only stealth will be speed.’ One of Hywel’s many aphorisms.

  ‘That’s what you said,’ Tom agreed. ‘So we didn’t sweat it too much, but went for them. If they had sentries, we never saw ’em, and then we were in among their fires. I slit a lot of sleeping cattle,’ he said, with a horrible smile. ‘Stupid fucks, asleep with a killer among them.’

  Remorse was not in Tom’s lexicon. The captain winced. The big man looked at Long Paw. ‘I got busy. You tell it.’

  Long Paw raised an eyebrow. ‘All the archers had an alchemical on our backs. I threw mine in a fire – to start the ball, so to speak.’ He nodded. ‘They were spectacular. If that’s the word.’ Long Paw was obviously proud of it.

  Tom nodded. ‘Made us plenty of light,’ he said, and the words, combined with his look, were horrible enough that Long Paw looked away from him.

  ‘We didn’t see no tents. But there was men sleeping on the ground, critters too. And beasts – horses, cattle, sheep. And wagons, dozens of them. They’ve been hitting the fair convoys, or I’m a Galle.’

  The captain nodded.

  ‘We burned it all, killed the animals, and then any critter we come across too.’

  ‘What critters? Boglins? Irks? Tell me.’ the captain asked, and the words just hung there, between them.

  Tom made a face. ‘Little ones. Boglins and irks mostly. You know. Nightmares and daemons pursued us. Fucking daemons are fast. I fought a golden bear, sword to its axe and claws.’ He blew his nose into his hand and flicked the contents out the window. ‘But I didn’t get to fight a daemon,’ he said regretfully.

  The captain wondered if, in the entire world, there was another man who could regret not having met a creature that projected terror.

  Bad Tom was not like other men.

  ‘How many? Total? What are we still up against?’ the captain asked.

  Long Paw shrugged. ‘Dark and fire, Cap’n. My word ain’t worth shit – but I say we killed maybe fifty men and more creatures.’ He shrugged. ‘And all we really did was kick the ant hill.’

  Tom gave Long Paw a look of appreciation. ‘What he said,’ Tom admitted. ‘We kicked the ant hill. But we kicked it hard.’

  Michael sputtered. ‘You two killed fifty Jacks?’ he asked.

  Tom looked at him as if he’d discovered a bad smell. ‘We had help, younker. And it weren’t all Jacks. I killed I don’t know how many – five? Ten? – before I realised they was all yoked together. Poor fucks.’

  Michael made a choking sound. ‘Captives?’ he managed.

  Tom shrugged. ‘Got to think so.’

  Michael’s outrage showed, and the captain raised a hand. Pointed at the door. ‘More wine,’ he said. ‘And take your time.’

  Long Paw shook his head as the young man slammed out. ‘Not for me, Captain. It’ll send me to sleep.’

  ‘I’m done, anyway,’ the captain said. ‘Better result than I thought. Thanks.’

  Long Paw clasped his hand again. ‘One for the books, Cap’n.’

  The clerk looked at his pencil scrawl. ‘I’ll just copy this out for fair,’ he said, exchanging a parting look with Long Paw and heading for the door himself.

  His departure left the captain alone with Bad Tom, who stretched his naked legs out beneath his blanket and took a long drink of his wine.

  ‘That Michael’s too soft for this life,’ Tom said. ‘He tries, and he ain’t worthless, but you should let him go.’

  ‘He doesn’t have anywhere to go,’ the captain said.

  Tom nodded. ‘I’d wondered.’ He took another sip and grinned. ‘That girl – the nun?’

  The captain looked blank.

  Tom wasn’t fooled for a moment. ‘Don’t give me that. Asking you why you curse God. Listen, you want my advice-’

  ‘I don’t,’ the captain said.

  ‘Get a knee between her legs and keep it there ’til you’re inside her. You want her – she wants you. I’m not saying rape her.’ Tom said this with a professional authority that was more horrible than his admission of killing the captives. ‘I’m just saying that if you get it done, you can have a warm bed as long as you’re here.’ He shrugged. ‘A warm bed and a soft shoulder. Good things for a man in command. None of the lads will blame you.’ His unspoken thought came through, too. Some of the lads might see you in a better light for it.

  Tom nodded at the captain, and the captain felt a black rage boil up inside him. He worked on it – trying to shape it, trying to plug it. But it was like the brew they’d sent against the enemy – oily black, and when it hit fire-

  Bad Tom took a deep breath and stepped back. ‘Beg your
pardon, Captain,’ he said. He said it with as much assurance as he’d suggested everything else. ‘Overstepped, I expect.’

  The captain swallowed bile. ‘Are my eyes glowing?’ he asked.

  ‘Little bit,’ Tom said. ‘You know what’s wrong with you, Captain?’

  The captain leaned on the table, the burst of rage dying away and leaving fatigue and a headache of Archaic proportions. ‘Many things.’

  ‘You’re a freak, just like me. You ain’t like them. Me – I take what I want and let the rest go. You want them to love you.’ Tom shook his head. ‘They don’t love the likes of us, Captain. Even when I kill their enemies, they don’t love me. Eh? You know what a sin-eater is?’

  That came out of nowhere. ‘I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘We have ’em up in the hills,. Usually some poor wee bastard with one eye or no hands or some other freak. When a man dies, or sometimes a woman, we put a piece of bread soaked in wine – they used to soak it in blood – on the corpse. Goes on the stomach and the heart. And the poor wee man comes and eats the bread, and takes all the dead’s sin on them. So the dead un goes off to heaven, and the poor wee man goes to hell.’ Tom was far away, in memory. The captain had never seen him that way before. It was odd, and a little scary, to be intimate with Bad Tom.

  ‘We’re sin-eaters, every one of us,’ Tom said. ‘You and me, sure – but Long Paw an’ Wilful Murder and Ser Hugo and Ser Milus and all the rest. Sauce too. Even that boy. We eat their sin. We kill their enemies, and then they send us away.’

  The captain had a flash of the daemon eviscerating his horse. We eat their sin. Somehow, the words hit him like a thunderclap, and he sat back. When he was done with the thought – which cascaded away like a waterfall, taking his thoughts in every direction – he realised the shadows had changed. His wine was long gone, Bad Tom was gone, his legs were stiff, and his hand hurt.

  Michael was standing in the doorway with a cup of wine in his hand.