The Red Knight ttsc-1

by Miles Cameron

  He settled for the quieter, more passive option, even though it was not in his nature and although he was all but bursting with power. He hadn’t felt so capable in many years. He wanted to play with it, the way a man will swing a new sword about, cutting the heads off ferns and fennel stalks.

  Harmodius bore down on his power. And his impatience.

  Pushed his senses further.

  Further.

  Well to the north he found trolls – their large, misshapen forms as horrible in their lack of symmetry as they were in their black crystalline alienness. They were marching.

  To the west, he found a user of much talent and little training. But he had no context for the discovery – a village witch, or a boglin shaman or one of the Wild’s living trees. He had no idea, and he dismissed the entity as far too weak to have displayed the power he had sensed.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to have left the world – departed by whatever path it had chosen. It manufactured a new loci, or jumped to one that had previously existed.

  The display of power remained like a beacon, and Harmodius was unhappy to find that it was behind them, to the south and the east by many leagues. But he swooped on it like a raptor falling on a rabbit – and fled just as quickly when he sensed the order of magnitude it represented.

  When he was a small boy in a fishing village Harmodius, who’d had a different name then, had rowed out on the deep in a small boat with two friends to fish for sea trout and salmon with hand lines. Porpoises and small whales shared the sport, and sometimes they caught good fish only to have them snatched away by their aquatic rivals. But late in the day, while pulling in a heavy fish, Harmodius had seen a seal – an enormous seal as long as his boat – flash into a turn and reach for their magnificent fish . . .

  . . . just as a leviathan, as much larger than the seal as the seal was larger than the salmon, turned under the boat to take the seal.

  The size of the creature beneath the boat – fifty times its length – and its great eye as it rolled, the froth of blood that reached the surface without a sound as it took the seal, the gentle swell it made, and then, perhaps the most terrifying of all, its mighty fluke breaking the surface a hundred yards away and flinging spray all the way over them-

  In all his life, Harmodius had never seen anything that moved him so deeply, or so impressed on him his own insignificance. It was more than fear. It was the discovery that some things are so great that they would not notice you even if they destroyed you.

  He’d brought in the salmon, which died unaware of the role it had played in the death of the mighty seal, and the lesson was not lost on the boy.

  And all of that came to him as he fled the immensity of whatever creature had briefly been in the Valley of the Albin, fifty leagues to the south.

  He came back into his own skin.

  Random was looking at him with concern. ‘You screamed!’ he said. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘We are safe,’ Harmodius said. But his voice was more of a a sob than it should have been. No one is safe. What was that?

  East of Albinkirk – Hector Lachlan

  East of Albinkirk, the sun rose on the western slopes of Parnassus, the westernmost of the mountains of the Morea where the streams rushed down, heavy with the last of the snow and the spring rains to flood the upper waters of the Albin.

  Hector Lachlan was drinking tea and watching the East Branch. It was high – far too high – and he was trying to figure out how he might get his herds over it.

  Behind him, the men in his tail were breaking camp, packing the wagon, donning their hauberks and their weapons, and the youngest, or the least lucky, were already out with the herds.

  While he watched, his tanist, Donald Redmane, stripped naked at the water’s edge and plunged in, using the edge of a ruined beaver dam as a diving platform. He was high spirited and strong and only heartbeats later, he was pulled out by the rope around his waist, his shoulder and collarbone bruised against the rocks.

  Lachlan winced.

  That night, something killed a stallion in their herd, and Lachlan, who had never fought an irk in his life, had to assume that it was some such creature who was responsible – multiple punctures and slashes from something much smaller than the horse. But the why of it eluded him. He doubled his herd guards, aware of how futile such measures could be. In the Hills, he had stone fences and deep glens with natural fortifications to take herds and guard them, but here, on the road – he was in the country that the drovers held to be safe. And something was hunting him. He could feel it.

  Chapter Nine

  Sister Amicia

  Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

  The fog was thin and wispy, but it did its job. It forced whatever was watching them to be more aggressive with the animals it was using. Rabbits came out of the woods in broad daylight. Starlings flew over the new diggings, first in pairs and then in swift flocks.

  Toward midday, when Ser Jehannes had the double outer ditch dug and when the merchant adventurers of Harndon, Lorica, Theva and Albin were cursing their luck and their temporary taskmaster as the blisters on their hands popped, the Abbess cast again, the fog grew thicker, and the animals grew more numerous still.

  By the time the nearly mutinous merchants were allowed to end their day and go to Mass, the fog was so thick that the watchmen on the fortress towers couldn’t see the base of their own wall. They could see the far horizon, though. The captain had no intention of letting his own fog put him at a disadvantage. Despite which precaution, wyverns overflew the fortress every hour or two, and the hearts of the defenders flinched each time the leathery wings passed. Out in the trees beyond the fields there was movement – the kind of movement a hunter sees when his quarry shakes a tree, or when a squirrel leaps to a branch too light to support the weight of the jump.

  Michael opened a blank book of bound parchment, and wrote in his best hand:

  The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day One. Or is it Day Eight?

  Today the captain and the lady Abbess raised a fog with a powerful phantasm. The enemy are all around us, and many have commented that the air seems thick and difficult to breathe. Maddock the Archer was shot dead with a longbow arrow from the cover of a stand of trees when he ventured from the new trenches to retrieve a mallet. He must have left the cover of the lady’s fog.

  There is a wyvern in the air over us. I can hear it scream. And I can feel it, even through the roof – a pressure on the top of my head.

  Michael put a line through that last, and then very carefully inked it over until not a word was legible.

  The captain has a sortie mounted and ready to ride at all hours. Every armoured man has a turn in the Sortie. He also ordered heavy machines constructed in the towers. The fortress has two heavy towers, and one now holds a heavy ballista and the other, lower tower holds a trebuchet.

  The people of the countryside and the merchants of the caravans have dug a trench from the Lower Town all the way to Bridge Castle. It is deeper than a man is tall, and wide enough to drive a small wagon along the bottom. We are lining it with boards. The captain has ordered bags placed along the bottom and no man knows what is in them.

  At sunset Michael went on to the walls, and joined with every man and woman in the fortress in prayer. They sent their voices up to heaven, and then the lady cast again, a simple sending such as any village witch might make, but aided, Michael hoped, by the wishes and prayers of every man and woman. She worked an aversion – the sort of thing Wise Women did for granaries on farms, which kept the smaller animals from eating the grain. She simply did it on a larger scale, and with a great deal more power.

  West of Albinkirk – Gerald Random

  Master Random’s convoy shook out early despite the adventures of the night, or perhaps because of them.

  He was quite proud of them. Men were singing in the dawn – some shaved at mirrors hung from wagon sides, and other men sharpened blades, sharpened arrow heads and crossbow quarrels. Men were rolling their
blankets tight against the damp. Others boiled water in copper pots, or heated up a cupful of last night’s porridge. At his own fire, the old Magus was heating ale in a copper shoe.

  ‘You seem content to help yourself,’ Random said.

  Harmodius didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘I pay you the compliment of assuming that you are a generous man. And I made some for you.’

  Random laughed. He was camping with a legend, who was heating him ale on a chilly spring morning.

  Birds sang, and men sang, and Random could see young Adrian from the goldsmiths sitting on a wagon box and sketching.

  Adrian was a pargeter – an artist in gold leaf. He was a likely lad, just about to leave apprenticeship for journeyman status, which would be a brief stop for him. His father was both talented and rich – one of the goldsmith’s coming men. Adrian was medium height, thin and fit, in expensive arming clothes made by professionals. He was wearing his breast- and backplate, his arming hood, and his armoured gloves lay across his lap. More and more of the young men were starting to ape the manners of the sell-swords – wearing their harnesses all day, carefully tending to their weapons.

  Random couldn’t see what young Adrian was sketching – it was on the other side of one of the goldsmith’s wagons. Warm ale in hand, he went to look.

  He smelled the thing long before he saw it. It had a horrible, sulphurous smell, overlaid with a sickly sweet-shop smell, like sugared liver.

  He smelled the smell, but it didn’t warn him.

  The dead thing had been a daemon.

  Young Adrian looked up from his sketch. ‘Henry found it in the bush.’ The other goldsmith apprentice stood by the corpse with determined possessiveness, despite the horror of it.

  Close up and dead, the daemon was deeply disconcerting. The size of a small horse, it had finely scaled skin, like a river bass or a blue-gill; and the scales varied from white to pale gray with veins of blue and black like fine marble – all surmounted by an opalescent sheen with all the colours of the rainbow. Its eyes were empty pits, the lids collapsed on them as if its death had robbed it of its eyes. It had a heavy, raptor-like head with a snout or a beak, and a crest like the plumage a man might wear on a tournament helm. It lay limp in death, like wilted flowers. It had two arms on its long trunk that were disturbingly like heavy human arms – the muscled arms of a blacksmith, perhaps – and heavy, powerful legs that seemed twice the size of the arms. Upright it must have stood as high as a man on a wagon.

  The legs and torso were balanced by a heavy tail covered in sharp spines.

  It was no animal. The beak and spines were inlaid in lead and gold in fantastic patterns; the bony ridge above the eyes held more inlay, and the dead daemon wore a cote of scarlet leather lined in fur – beautiful work. Random couldn’t help himself – he knelt, despite the stink, and fingered the material. Deerskin – dyed brighter and better than any dye he knew of, and tightly sewn in sinew.

  There wasn’t a mark on the monster, and the most disconcerting part of it was that its alien face was strangely beautiful, and wore a look of terror.

  The old Magus wandered over, drinking ale. He stopped and looked at the daemon.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  Random didn’t know how to broach his thought. ‘I’d like the cote,’ he said.

  Harmodius looked at him as if he was mad.

  ‘You killed it. It’s yours.’ Random shrugged. ‘Or that’s how we did things when I was in the king’s army.’

  Harmodius shook his head. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Take it then. My gift. For your hospitality.’

  Three more of the goldsmith apprentices helped him roll it over. It took him five minutes to get the cote off. It was the size of a horse blanket, or perhaps slightly smaller and was untouched by whatever wound had killed the monster, and clean. Random rolled it tightly, wrapped it in sacking, and put it in his own wagon.

  The apprentices were eyeing the gold inlay.

  ‘Leave it,’ Harmodius said. ‘Their bodies generally fade rather than rot. I wonder-’ He bent over the corpse. Prodded it with a stick, and despite having just rolled it over, the apprentices stepped back, and Henry hurried to get a quarrel in his crossbow.

  The Magus drew a short stick from his cote. It was like a twig – a crazy twig that looked like a lightning bolt – but it was beautifully maintained with an oil finish that most twigs couldn’t hold. The ends had minute silver caps.

  Harmodius ran it over the corpse – back and forth. Back and forth.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. He said a verse of Archaic to the delight of all present, who had never imagined being allowed to watch a famous magus work. It was different in daylight. Men who had hidden away when he cast at night now stared like churls.

  Random could see the power gathering around the older man’s hand. He didn’t have the talent to cast power, but he’d always been able to see it.

  Then the old man cast, flicking his fingers at the daemon.

  It seemed to pulse with colour – every man let go a breath – and then it dissolved to sand.

  And not very much sand, at that.

  ‘Fae,’ Harmodius said. ‘Something interrupted its decomposition when it died.’

  Their incomprehension was evident. Harmodius shrugged. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m only talking to myself, anyway.’ He laughed. ‘Master Merchant, a word with you.’

  Random followed the old Magus away from the wagons. Behind them, Old Bob, the mercenary, rode up fully armed. The pargeter was showing off his sketch and Old Bob was suddenly silent.

  ‘I’ve killed two of them in three days,’ Harmodius said. ‘This is very bad. I ask your help, in the name of the king. But I warn you that this will be dangerous. Extremely dangerous.’

  ‘What sort of help?’ Random asked. ‘And for what reward? Pardon me, my lord. I know that all the court think my kind lives only for gold. We don’t. But par dieu, messire, I have several men’s fortunes in these wagons. My own, first and foremost.’

  Harmodius nodded. ‘I know. But there is clearly an incursion – perhaps even an invasion – from the Wild. The daemons are the enemy’s most valuable and most powerful asset. I thought it horrifying that I should encounter one. Two means we are watched, and there is a force in behind us. Three . . . three is unthinkable. Despite which, I ask you to send a messenger to the king. Immediately. One of your best men. And that we continue north.’

  Random nodded.

  ‘I have no idea if the king will guarantee the value of your convoy,’ Harmodius said. ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘Sixty thousand golden nobles,’ Random said.

  Harmodius sucked in a breath, and then laughed.

  ‘Then I can safely say that the king can’t replace it for you. Good Christ, man, how can you take so much into the wilderness?’ Harmodius laughed.

  Random shrugged. ‘We go to buy a year’s produce of grain from a thousand farms,’ he said. ‘And beef from the hillmen – maybe fifteen hundred animals, ready to be fattened for market. And beer, small wine, skins from deer, beaver, rabbit, otter, bear and wolf – a year’s worth for every haberdasher and every furrier in Harndon. That’s the business of the Northern Fair, and that’s without their staple of wool.’

  Harmodius shook his head. ‘I’ve never thought of the value of all these things,’ he said. ‘Or if I have, I’ve forgotten.’

  Random nodded. ‘Half a million gold nobles. That’s the value of the Northern Fair.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was that much gold in the world,’ Harmodius laughed.

  ‘Nor is there. That’s why we have helmets and crossbows and fine wines and goldsmith work, and gaudy rings and bolts of every fabric under the sun – and raisins and dates and olive oil and sugar and every other product the north doesn’t have. To trade. It’s why my convoy must get through.’

  Harmodius looked at the mountains, just breaking the distant horizon. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said. ‘Now that I do, it seems very – vulnerabl
e.’ He looked around. ‘What happens if there is no fair?’

  Random had had that very thought several times in the last two days.

  ‘Then Harndon has no beef; it gets only the grain from the home counties; there are no furs for clothes or hats, no honey for bread, less beer and ale in every house. And the king is less by the tax he collects on the merchandise, and less again by the value of – hard to say, but let’s call it half of the wool staple. Small folks would starve. In the East, merchants who buy our wool would break. Most of the money-men of Harndon would break, and hundreds of apprentices would go out of work.’ He shrugged. ‘And that’s just this winter. It’d be worse in the spring.’

  Harmodius looked at the merchant as if he was being told a fairy tale. Then he shook his head. ‘This has been an eventful morning, Master Merchant. We should be on our way. If you’ll agree to go.’

  Random nodded. ‘I’ll go. Because if I turn this convoy back,’ he shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll lose a great deal of money.’ And I’ll never be mayor.

  Lissen Carak – Michael

  The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Two

  Michael licked his pen nib, absently painting the corner of his mouth in tree-gall and iron.

  Today, all of the small folk dug at the trench. I append a small sketch of the work; it runs from the gate of the Lower Town to the out-wall of the Bridge Fort, a distance of four hundred and twenty-four paces. With just under a thousand working men and women, we dug the ditch in two days. The upcast of the ditch has been made into low walls on either side, and the captain has ordered us to plant stakes from our stores – the palisades we use when we encamp – along the edge of the ditch.

  All the day a heavy fog stayed over the length of the ditch – today’s phantasm cast by the Abbess and is maintained by the good sisters, who can be heard praying at all hours in their chapel.

  The enemy has sought all day to search out our new work. The air is thick with birds – starlings and crows and doves, but they dare not enter the fog, and the area close in to the castle walls seems abhorrent to them.