The captain dredged a smile out of his reverie, shrugged and took the wine.
He drank.
‘Jacques went down to Bridge Castle with grain and came back with a message for you from Messire Gelfred,’ Michael said. ‘He says it’s urgent he speak to you.’
‘Then I’ll have to put my harness on,’ the captain said. He sounded whiney, even to himself. ‘Let’s get it done.’
The Albinkirk Road – Ser Gawin
He had lost track of time.
He wasn’t sure what he was any more.
Gawin rode through another spring day, surrounded by carpets of wildflowers that flowed like morning fog beneath his horse, rolling away in clumps and hummocks, a thousand perfect flowers in every glance, blue and purple, white and yellow. In the distance, all was a carpet of yellow green from the haze of sun on the mountainsides that were coming closer every day, their peaks woven like a tapestry in and out of the stands of trees that grew thicker and closer every mile.
He’d never had the least interest in flowers before.
‘Ser knight?’ asked the boy with the crossbow.
He looked at the boy, and the boy flinched. Gawin sighed.
‘Ye weren’t moving,’ the boy said.
Gawin pressed his spurs to his horse’s side, and shifted his weight, and his destrier moved off. His once-handsome dark leather bridle was stained with the death of fifty thousand flowers, because Archangel ate every flower he could reach as soon as he’d figured out that the once fierce hands on the reins weren’t likely to stop him eating. That’s what his misery meant to his war horse – more flowers to eat.
I am a coward and a bad knight. Gawin looked back at a life of malfeasance and tried to see where he’d gone wrong, and again and again he came back to a single moment – torturing his older brother. The five of them ganging up on Gabriel. Beating him. The pleasure of it – his screams-
Is that where it started? he asked himself.
‘Ser knight?’ the boy asked again.
The horse’s head was down, and they’d stopped again.
‘Coming,’ Gawin muttered. Behind him, the convoy he was not guarding rolled north, and Gawin could see the Great Bend ahead, where the road turned to head west.
West towards the enemy. West, where his father’s castle waited full of his mother’s hate and his brother’s fear.
Why am I going west?
‘Ser knight?’ the boy asked. This time, there was fear in his voice. ‘What’s that?’
Gawin shook himself out of his waking dream. The goldsmith’s boy – Adrian? Allan? Henry? – was backing away from a clump of trees just to his left.
‘There’s something there,’ the boy said.
Gawin sighed. The Wild was not here. His horse stood among wildflowers, and last year this field had been ploughed.
Then he saw the sickly-pale arm, light brown, shiny like a cockroach, holding a stone-tipped javelin. He saw it and it saw him in the same moment, and he leaned to the left with the habit of hard training and ripped his long sword from its scabbard.
The boglin threw its weapon.
Gawin cut the shaft out of the air.
The boglin gave a thin scream of anger, balked of its prey, and the goldsmith’s boy shot it. His crossbow loosed with a snap and the bolt went home into the creature with a slurpy thud and came straight out the other side in a spray of gore, leaving the small horror to flop bonelessly on the wildflowers for as long as a trout might take to die, making much the same gasping motions with its toothless mouth, and then its eyes filmed over and it was gone.
‘They always have gold,’ the goldsmith’s boy said, taking a step towards it.
‘Step back, young master, and load that latch again.’ Gawin was shocked at his voice – calm, commanding. Alive.
The boy obeyed.
Gawin backed Archangel slowly, watching the nearest woods.
‘Run for the wagons, boy. Sound the alarm.’
There was more movement, more javelin heads, a flash of that hideous cockroach brown, and the boy turned and ran.
Gawin slammed his visor down.
He wasn’t in full armour. Most of it was in a goldsmith’s wagon, wrapped in tallow and coarse sacking in two wicker baskets because he had no squires to keep it. And because wearing it might have meant something.
So he was wearing his stained jupon, his boots, his beautiful steel gauntlets and his bassinet, riding a horse worth more than three of the wagons full of fine wools he was protecting. He backed Archangel faster, sawing the reins back and forth as his destrier all but trotted backwards.
The first javelin came out of the woods, high. He had his sword in his right hand, all the way down by his left side, the position his father’s master at arms had taught him. He could hear the man saying ‘Cut up, mind! Not into your own horse, ye daft thing!’
He cut up, severing the weapon’s haft and breaking its flight.
Behind him, he heard the boy yelling ‘To arms! To arms!’
He risked a long glance back at the convoy. It was hard to focus through the piercing of his visor, hard to pick up distant movement, but he thought he could see Old Bob directing men in all directions.
He turned back to see the air full of javelins, and he cut – up, down, up again as fast as thought. A javelin haft caught him in the side of head and rang his helmet like a bell, even with his padded arming cap. He smelt his own blood.
Turned his horse’s head – because once they’d all thrown, he had a moment to get around, and get away.
Two of them were running for him. They were fast, moving like insects – so low to the ground that they were a danger to horses’ legs. Archangel reared, pivoted on his hind legs, and a powerful forefoot shot out like a boxer’s punch.
Gawin flicked his sword out along his fingers, lengthening his grip until he was holding only the disc-shaped pommel and, in the same motion, made a wrist cut down and back.
Archangel’s boglin popped like a ripe melon, its chest and neck caving in with a dull thud and a fine spray of ichor. Gawin’s screeched as the cold iron pierced its hide – iron was poison to its kind, and it screamed its hate as its tiny soul rose from its corpse like a minute thundercloud that dissipated on the first whiff of breeze.
All at once they were away, the big horse galloping easily over the wildflowers. Gawin had trouble breathing. His visor seemed to cut all the air from his lungs and his chest was tight.
As he rode, he could see there were other knots of the things – perhaps four or five groups of them spread across the flowers like shit stains on a pretty dress, and suddenly he was filled with a fey energy, a will to do a great deed and die in the accomplishment.
I am a knight, he thought fiercely.
Gawin sat up in the saddle, holding his long, sharp sword with new purpose, and he turned Archangel and raised it at the boglins. Something dead within him rekindled as the sun lit the blade like a torch.
He felt the touch of something divine, and he saluted as if riding in a tournament.
‘Blessed Saint George,’ he prayed, ‘let me die as I wish I had lived.’
He put his spurs to Archangel – gently, a nudge rather than a rake – and the great horse thundered forward.
The boglins scattered. Javelins flew past and then he was among them, through them, using his knees to turn Archangel in a long curve toward the next clump, who were already running for the trees.
Gawin had no plans to survive so he thundered after them, slaying any that stood or were merely too slow to escape, leaning far out from the saddle-
Something called from inside the wood – a wail that froze his blood.
It was out of the woods and at him in heartbeats.
Archangel was ready, pivoted his whole great bulk as Gawin’s weight shifted so that the war horse moved like his own feet in a fight, and the huge enemy – scent of burned hair and soap and old ashes – shot past. One taloned arm stretched out like an angry cat’s paw, reaching fo
r Archangel’s neck, but the war horse was fast, and some steel-shod forefoot smashed the taloned hand with lethal precision.
The thing screamed, its left talon hanging limply, the bones broken. It rose on its hind feet, raised its right claw, and fire shot from its outstretched talons – a beam of fire that caught his body where the mail aventail of his helmet hung over his padded jupon. It had no pressure, no impact, and Gawin ducked his head, putting the peak of his helmet into the flame by instinct rather than training. His left eye flared with pain even as the first cold knife of agony pierced his left shoulder. His body, with no guidance from his mind, cut down blindly with the sword.
His blow was weak and badly directed – the edge of the blade didn’t even bite into the thing’s hide – but the sword’s weight fell on its brow ridge, and it stumbled.
Archangel shouldered it. Gawin almost lost his seat, his back and rump crashing into the high-backed saddle as his war horse made its own fighting decisions and leaped forward, bearing down the monster again with weight and momentum, so that the creature’s stumble was more off balance and the horse landed two more blows with its steel-shod forefeet, forcing the creature onto all fours. It roared with pain as it put weight on the broken limb.
And then the grass was full of boglins thrusting their stone-tipped spears at him, and some of them scoring hits. The deerskin of his padded jupon turned a few and the damp sheep’s wool stuffing turned others, but at least one punched straight through and into his skin. Unthinking, he touched his spurs to Archangel and the great horse responded with a mighty leap forward, and then they were running free.
Gawin turned him in a wide circle. He couldn’t see from his left eye, and the pain in his side was so great that he could scarcely feel it – or anything else.
I want that thing, he thought. Let them take that head back to Harndon and show it to the king, and I will be content.
He got Archangel around. The horse had at least two wounds – both from javelins. But like his rider he was trained to fight hurt, and went at his prey with all the spirit he could have asked.
But the monster was running – weight forward, low to the ground, only three legs working, a dozen boglins gathered tight around it in the strong sunlight, as they fled into the trees.
Gawin reined up – surprised at himself. Death lay waiting in those trees. But it was one thing to fight to the death out here under the sun, and another to follow the Wild into the waiting trees and die alone – and for nothing. He reined up, and looked at the litter of broken boglins, and his view of them suddenly narrowed – he tasted salt in his mouth, and copper, and-
Lorica – Ser Gaston
Lorica again.
Gaston spat the foreign name as he watched the grey stone walls approach. He flicked a look at his cousin, who was riding serenely at his side.
‘We are going to be arrested,’ Gaston said.
Jean made a face. ‘For what?’ he asked. He laughed, and at the silvery peel of his laughter, other men smiled all down the column. Their contingent was third; first the king’s household, then the Earl of Towbray’s, and then theirs. They had more knights than the king and the earl together.
‘We killed the two squires. I locked the sheriff in a shed. You burned the inn.’ Gaston winced as he said the last. Ten days in Alba and he was beginning to appreciate just how poor their behaviour had been.
Jean shrugged. ‘No one of worth was involved except the knight,’ he said. His voice rode the edge of a sneer. ‘And he has chosen not to take exception. He has shown especial wisdom in this, I think.’
‘Nonetheless, the king will learn exactly what happened in the next hour or so,’ Gaston said.
Jean de Vrailly gave his cousin a sad smile. ‘My friend, you have much to learn of the workings of the world. If we were in the least danger, my angel would have told me. And it seems to me that our knights make up the best part of this column – bigger, better men in superb armour on fine horses. We can always fight. And if we fight, we will win.’ De Vrailly shrugged again. ‘You see? Simple.’
Gaston considered taking his own men and riding away.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain rode through the postern gate of the Bridge Castle with no one but Michael, also mailed and armed. They’d ridden out of the upper postern of the fortress with a minimum of fuss – two men-at-arms on detail. But the captain rode fast and hard down the ridge because the sky was full of crows to the west. He noted there wasn’t a bird to be seen over the fortress or the castle.
He dismounted in the Bridge Castle courtyard, where big merchant wagons were parked hub-to-hub leaving just room for a sortie to form up. As the captain looked around he realised that all the wagons were occupied. The merchants were living in them. No wonder Ser Milus said he had room. Over by the main tower, dogs whined and barked – four brace of good hounds. He stopped and let them smell him. Dogs made him smile with their enthusiastic approval. All dogs liked him.
Cleg, Ser Milus’ valet, came and led him into the main tower, where the garrison had their quarters on the ground floor – plenty of paliasses of new straw, with six local women and another half-dozen company trulls sitting on the floor and sewing. They were making mattresses – there were twenty ells of striped sacking already measured and cut, as the captain had seen done in a dozen countries. Clean sacks made good mattresses while dirty linen spread disease – any soldier knew it.
The women rose to their feet and curtsied.
The captain bowed. ‘Don’t let me disturb you, ladies.’
Ser Milus took his hand and a pair of archers – older, steady men, Jack Kaves and Smoke, pushed the merchants away. Three of them were waving scrolls.
‘I protest!’ the taller man called. ‘My dogs-’
‘I’ll take you to law for this!’ called a stout man.
The captain ignored them and went up a set of tight steps to the uppermost floor, where tents had been used to partition the tower into sleeping quarters for officers.
Ser Jehannes nodded curtly to the captain. He nodded back.
‘Ready to move back up the hill?’ the captain said.
Jehannes nodded. ‘Do I owe an apology?’
The captain lowered his voice. ‘I pissed you off, and you sulked about it. I need you. I need you at the fortress, giving orders, kicking arses and taking names.’
Jehannes nodded. ‘I’ll go back up with you.’ He looked over to Gelfred, and indicated the huntsman with a nod. ‘It’s bad.’
‘No one ever summons me for good news.’ The captain was relieved that he hadn’t lost his most senior man forever, and clapped the man on the back hoping it was the right gesture. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Jehannes paused. ‘I am also sorry,’ he said. ‘I am differently made to you, and I lack your certainty.’ He shrugged. ‘How is Bent doing?’
‘Very well indeed.’ Bent was the archer in Ser Jehannes’ lance – and also the most senior archer in the fortress.
‘I’ll send you Ser Brutus,’ the captain said to Milus, who grinned.
‘You mean you’re trading me the best knight in the company for a kid with an archer he can’t control?’ He laughed. ‘Never mind – Jehannes outranked me and never did any work anyway.’
The captain thought – not for the first time – how sensitive his mercenaries were. Jehannes had chosen to go to the castle garrison as a mere man-at-arms rather than go to the fortress with the captain, because he was angry. And everyone knew it, because there was no privacy, in a camp or in a garrison. And now that he and the captain had made it up everyone was very gentle about it., The teasing would start later. The captain thought it remarkable that such men had so much tact, but they did.
Gelfred was waiting, and from his expression, he was about to explode.
The captain went into his ‘room’ and sat at the low camp table on a leather stool. Gelfred beckoned to the other two officers, and both came in. Jehannes paused in the doorway and spoke to som
eone just outside the tent flap wall. ‘Clear this floor,’ he said.
They heard men grumbling, and then Marcus, Jehannes’ squire, said in his guttural accent, ‘All clear, sers.’
Gelfred looked around. ‘Not sure where to start.’
‘How about the beginning? And with a cup of wine?’ The captain tried to be light hearted, but the others looked too serious.
‘The merchants came in – two of them had animals.’ Gelfred shrugged. ‘I’m telling this badly. Two of them had a dozen good falcons and some dogs. I took the liberty of securing them. Aye?’
A dozen good falcons and some hunting dogs would be worth a fortune. No wonder the merchants were so incensed.
‘Go on,’ the captain said.
‘Today is the first morning I’ve been here.’ Gelfred cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been in the woods.’
‘You did a beautiful job,’ the captain said. ‘Tom hit their camp just right – didn’t even see a guard.’
Gelfred smiled at the praise. ‘Thanks. Anyway. Starting this morning, I-’ he looked at Ser Milus. ‘I started flying the hawks against the birds – those that watch the castle.’ He shrugged. ‘I know this sounds lame-’
‘Not at all,’ said the captain.
Gelfred breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I was afraid you’d think me mad. Will you trust that I can see – I can see – that some of the animals are servants of the Enemy?’ He whispered the last part.
The captain nodded. ‘Yes. I believe it. Go on.’
Jehannes shook his head. ‘It sounds blasphemous to me,’ he said.
Gelfred put his hands on his hips in exasperation. ‘I have a licence from the Bishop,’ he said.
The captain shrugged. ‘Get on with it, Gelfred.’
Gelfred brought out a game bag. It was stiff with blood, but then game bags generally were.
He extracted a dove – a very large specimen indeed – laid it on the camp table, and stretched out its wings.
‘The gyrfalcon took it down about two hours ago,’ he said. ‘No other bird we have is big enough.’
The captain was staring at the message tube on the bird’s leg.
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