The Red Knight ttsc-1

by Miles Cameron

  ‘Of Witch Bane,’ the captain said.

  Gawin was whiter, if anything, than when the captain had first seen him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We both knew you loved her.’

  The captain shrugged.

  ‘Gabriel-’

  ‘Gabriel, Viscount Murien is dead,’ the captain said. ‘I am the captain. Some men call me the Red Knight.’

  ‘Red Knight? Like some nameless bastard?’ Gawin said. ‘You’re my brother, Gabriel Moderatus Murien, the heir of the Duke of the North, son of the king’s sister.’

  ‘Oh, I’m the son of the king’s sister all right,’ the captain said, and then clamped down, before any more came out.

  Gawin choked. He sat up, and cursed. A slow thread of scarlet worked its way across his groin. ‘No!’ he muttered.

  The captain nodded. ‘Yes. If it makes you feel any better, we’re only half brothers,’ he said.

  ‘Sweet Christ and his five wounds,’ Gawin said.

  The captain came to a decision – the kind of decision he made, where he threw out one set of options and adopted another, like life on the battlefield. He moved his chair closer to his half-brother. ‘Tell me this terrible fucking thing you did in Lorica,’ he said. He took Gawin’s hand. ‘Tell me, and I’ll forgive you for killing Prudentia. She already forgives you. I’ll explain sometime. Tell me what happened in Lorica, and let’s start again, from age nine, when we were friends.’

  Gawin lay back, so that their eyes broke contact. ‘The price of your forgiveness is steep, brother.’ He was suddenly red as blood. Then he hung his head. ‘I am deeply ashamed. I would not confess this to a priest.’

  ‘I’m no priest, and I have plenty of which to be ashamed. Some day I, too, will explain. Now tell me.’

  ‘Why?’ Gawin asked. ‘Why? You’ll only hate me more – add contempt to the list of your grievances. I played the caitiff, I was craven and I grovelled under another man’s sword.’ Tears came down his face. ‘I failed and lost. I was nothing. For my sins, Satan sent this,’ and he pulled down his shirt to show the scales that had grown from his waist to his neck on the right side.

  The captain looked at his brother – still so proud, even after such a thing happened, and all unknowing of his own pride. So easy to understand others the captain thought with wry amusement. And surprising sorrow. He couldn’t keep his emotional distance with Gawin.

  ‘Losing is not, in and of itself, a sin.’ The captain rubbed his beard. ‘It took me years to learn that, but I did. Failure is not sin. Wallowing in failure-’ he hung his own head ‘-is something at which I can excel, if I allow it to myself, but that’s more like the sin.’

  ‘You sound like a man of God,’ Gawin said.

  ‘Fuck God,’ the captain said.

  ‘Gabriel!’

  ‘Seriously, Gawin, what has God ever done for me?’ the captain laughed. ‘If I awaken after a sword thrust with the eternal flames burning my sorry arse, I’ll spit in the maker’s face, because that’s all I was ever offered in a rigged game, and I will have played it anyway.’

  That blasphemy ended all conversation for a long time. The sun was setting.

  Gawin rolled his hips a little. ‘My groin is bleeding again. Can you re-wrap it? I can’t stomach the nursing sisters wrapping my groin.’

  ‘Crap,’ the captain said. What had been a thread of scarlet was now a rapidly spreading stain – a pool of blood. ‘Jesus wept! No, I’m getting expert help.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll both likely die of the family curse – overweening pride – but I don’t have to actively help you die.’ He scraped his chair back. ‘Amicia?’ he called. ‘Amicia?’

  She came so quickly that he knew – knew from her face, as well – that she’d heard every word they had said.

  And she had a length of boiled linen in one hand and a pair of sharp scissors in the other. ‘Hold him down and this will go faster,’ she said, all business.

  Gawin turned his face away.

  ‘Really,’ the captain said, when the bandage was off, ‘you should enjoy having such a beauty work on your groin.’

  Amicia paused. He looked into her eyes for the first time in days and felt like a fool. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered weakly.

  But she held his gaze. And then he saw her wink at Gawin. ‘A secret for a secret,’ she said, with that not-a-smile in the corner of her mouth. She bent over the long wound on the young knight’s leg, and when her lips were a finger’s width from his thigh, she breathed out – a long breath – and as she breathed, the wound closed. The captain saw the power flow through her, a great pulse of power, as great as anything he’d ever handled.

  In his sight, it was bright green.

  She looked up from her work and just a flicker of her eyes, and in them was a charge and a promise and in that flicker of a heartbeat he accepted both.

  ‘What did she do?’ Gawin asked. The captain’s broad torso was blocking his ability to see. ‘It’s all numb.’

  ‘A poultice,’ the captain said cheerfully. The room suddenly smelled of summer flowers. She was wrapping fresh linen around the wound, sponging off the fresh blood and the older dried blood.

  Gawin tried to sit up, and the captain held him down. Under his left hand, something felt very wrong with his half-brother’s shoulder, and he rolled the edge of his shirt collar back.

  Gawin’s shoulder was finely scaled, like a fish, or a wyvern. The captain ran his hand over it, and behind him, Amicia’s breath came in a sharp gasp.

  Gawin groaned. ‘And you think you are cursed by God?’

  Amicia ran her hand over the young knight’s scales, and the captain found himself instantly jealous.

  ‘I have seen this before,’ she said.

  Gawin brightened perceptively. ‘You have?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Can it be cured?’ he asked.

  She bit her lip. ‘I really don’t know, but it was not uncommon among . . . among . . .’ she stammered.

  The captain thought that an astrologer would have said it was a day for secrets, and their revelation.

  ‘I will look into it,’ she said with the assurance of the medico, and she swept from the room, the pale grey of her over-gown fluttering behind her.

  Gawin watched her, and the captain watched her and then. ‘She used power,’ Gawin said quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ the captain said.

  ‘She is-’ Gawin let his head fall back. ‘I was headed north,’ he began. ‘The king had dismissed me from court for shooting my big mouth off. I fell in love – oh, I am telling this badly. I was trying to impress the Queen’s Maid-of-Honour. She . . . never mind. I said something I shouldn’t have said to the king and he sent me off to the Wild to gain glory.’ Gawin shook his head. ‘I have a great name as a bane of the Wild. You know why? Because after we killed you – well, we thought we did – I rode away to die in the Wild. Alone.’ He laughed. ‘A daemon attacked me, and I killed it.’ His laugh was a little wild. ‘Hand to hand. I lost my dagger in the fight, and I battered it to death, and so men call me Hard Hands.’

  ‘Pater must have been very proud,’ the captain muttered.

  ‘Oh, he was,’ Gawin answered. ‘So proud he sent me to court so the king could send me away. I rode north to Lorica, and put up in an inn.’ He turned his head away. ‘I’m not sure I can tell this while I look at you. I took rooms. A foreign knight came with a retinue – I don’t know how many, but it was a hundred knights, at least. Jean de Vrailly, God curse his name. He called me out into the courtyard, challenged me to combat, and attacked me.’ Gawin fell silent.

  ‘So? You were always a better swordsman than I,’ the captain said.

  Gawin shook his head. ‘No. No, you were the better swordsman. Ser Hywel told me after you died; you’d pretended to be inept.’

  The captain shrugged. ‘Fine. You were, and are, a fine man-at-arms.’

  ‘Ser Jean imagines himself to be the very best knight in all of the world,’ Gawin said.

  ‘
Really?’ the captain said. ‘How very dangerous.’

  Gawin snorted. ‘You really haven’t changed.’

  ‘I have, you know,’ the captain said.

  ‘I never thought I’d be able to chuckle while I told this. He was in armour – I was not.’

  The captain nodded. ‘He would be, being a Galle. I was just fighting there. They take themselves very seriously.’

  ‘I only had a riding sword – by Saint George, I make too many excuses. I held him – took a wound, and he punched my sword into one of my squires. My own sword killed my sworn man.’ Now all the humour was gone, and Gawin was somewhere between toneless and sobbing. ‘I lost all sense of the fight, and he mastered me – pushed me down into the dirt. Made me admit myself bested.’

  How that must have tasted, the captain thought. Because he had imagined doing exactly that to this man a thousand times. He sat by the very man’s bedside and tried to think what had changed in a few minutes, that now, it seemed impossible that he had imagined his half-brother’s humiliation. Desired it. Tasted and savoured it, just two days ago.

  ‘Then he went into the inn and killed my senior squire,’ Gawin said. He shrugged. ‘I have vowed to kill him.’

  The captain had a restless urge to go follow Amicia. He felt the need to extract a vow of silence. Or was that just an excuse? And the pain – raw, like a visible bruise – in Gawin’s voice – he’d only just forced himself to decide in favour of the younger man, and now he was his confessor.

  It was like being the captain.

  ‘Your enemy is my enemy,’ he said simply, and leaned down, and put his arms around his brother’s neck. Amongst the Muriens, a good expression of hate was a way of showing love. Sometimes, the only way.

  ‘Oh, Gabriel!’ Gawin said, and burst into tears.

  ‘Gabriel died, Gawin,’ the captain said.

  Gawin dried his eyes. ‘You have problems of your own, no doubt.’ He managed a smile.

  ‘Where would you like me to begin?’ the captain said. ‘I’m engaged in a siege with an enemy who can deploy any kind of creature, who outnumbers me ten or fifteen or twenty to one, and who is led by a ruthless genius.’

  Gawin managed another smile. ‘My brother is a ruthless genius.’

  The captain grinned.

  Gawin nodded. ‘You’re about to try something insane. I can taste it. Remember the chicken coup? Remember your alchemical experiment?’

  The captain looked around, as if he feared an eavesdropper. ‘He’s going to hit us hard, tonight. He has to. Up until now, to all intents and purposes, he’s been losing the siege. The way the Wild works, eventually, some one of his own will see him as weak and take him down.’

  Gawin shrugged. ‘They’re the enemy. Who knows what they think?’

  The captain returned a grim smile. ‘I do. All too well.’

  ‘So?’ Gawin asked, after a difficult moment. ‘Why do you know? What they think?’

  The captain drew along breath.

  Why do you curse God every morning?

  Because-

  ‘Maybe sometime I’ll tell you,’ the captain said.

  Gawin absorbed that. ‘The man of secrets. Very well. What are you about to do?’

  The captain shrugged. ‘I’m going to try for him. Try to drag him down. The old Magus is in on it.’

  Gawin sat up. ‘You’re going for Tho-’

  ‘Don’t speak his name,’ the captain said. ‘Naming calls.’

  Gawin bit his lip. ‘I wish I were fit to ride.’

  ‘You will be, soon enough.’ The captain leaned forward and embraced his half-brother. ‘I’d rather be your friend than your foe. Foe was merely a habit.’

  Gawin patted the captain’s back gently. ‘Gabriel! I’m sorry!’

  The captain held the young knight until he slept. It didn’t take long.

  ‘I’m not Gabriel,’ he said to his sleeping half-brother. And then he went to find the woman. But he didn’t have to go far. She was sitting on a chair in the corridor.

  Their eyes met. Hers said, Don’t come too close – I’m vulnerable just now.

  He wasn’t sure what his own said, but he stopped at arm’s length. ‘You heard,’ he said, far more harshly than he intended.

  ‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t offend me by requiring my silence. I hear the confessions of dying men. I care nothing for the secrets of the mighty.’

  In his head, he knew that her anger was a kind of armour to keep him farther away. But it hurt, anyway. ‘Sometimes, secrets are secret for a reason,’ he said.

  ‘You curse God because your mother was unfaithful to your father and you grew to manhood with the torments of your brothers?’ She spat. ‘I thought you were braver than that.’ She shrugged. ‘Or do you mean that you intend to sortie out into the night and die?’

  He took a deep breath. Counted carefully to fifty in High Archaic, and let the breath go. ‘You have been in the Wild,’ he said softly.

  She looked away. ‘Begone.’

  ‘Amicia-’ He almost called her Love, and he stammered. ‘I have been in your palace. On your bridge. I’m not making judgment.’

  ‘I know, you idiot,’ she spat at him.

  He was stunned by her venom. ‘I will protect you!’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want your protection!’ she said, the anger all but forming frost on her lips. ‘I am not a suffering princess in a tower! I am a woman of God, and my God is the only protection I require, and I do not know why my power does not come from the sun! I have enough weight of sin on my head without you adding to my burdens!’ She got to her feet and gave him a sharp push. ‘I am an Outwaller chit, a slut, a woman lower than a serf. You, it turns out, are some lost prince. You can, I have no doubt, cozen any woman you like, looks, money and power!’ She pushed him again. ‘I AM NOT FOR YOU.’

  He was not a blushing youth of sixteen. He caught her arm as she pushed him, and pulled. He thought she would fall into his arms.

  She almost did. But she caught herself, and his kiss was deflected. His arms pinned her, and she said, with all the ice a woman can muster: ‘Shall I tell Sym you forced me? Captain?’

  He let her go. Just in that moment, he hated her.

  Just in that moment, the feeling was probably mutual.

  She walked away to the main hospital room, and he had nowhere to which he could retreat except the dispensary behind him.

  On the other hand, it was empty, and just then what he needed, perhaps more than ever before in his life, was to be alone.

  He collapsed into the heavy wooden chair in the darkened room, and before he knew it, he was crying.

  Lissen Carak – Sauce

  Sauce had the duty. She was fresh enough to her promotion that she still enjoyed the responsibility – made a special effort to be clean, neat, her armour well-polished, her square-topped cap neat as a pin. She knew that a lot of the older men resented taking orders from a woman, and she knew that a perfect turn-out helped.

  She set the guards on the main gate, and marched the duty detachment to the posterns, relieving each post in turn – challenge, password, posting by the numbers, and accepting the salutes – she loved the ceremony. And she loved to see the effect on the farmers and their families. Farmers clean and oil their tools, tour their livestock, morning and night. Farmers know a patient craftsman when they see one, even when the craft is war.

  She relieved the last post and marched the off-going detachment through the courtyard to the base of the West Tower, where she dismissed them. Two slow-moving archers were detailed to wash the heavy wood piling driven into the ground for sword practice – Low Sym had been tied to it for his punishment, and it had various substances on it that needed cleaning off.

  Then she climbed the steps to the tower, listening to the off-going soldiers. She was listening for criticism; she expected it. She wasn’t really good enough to be a corporal. She wanted to be – but there was so much to learn.

  And she knew that this was going
to be a tough night. All across the garrison tower men were polishing, sharpening, trimming a belt end, checking the stuffing on a gambeson sleeve. A thousand rituals to conjure safety and luck in battle. And they were all tired.

  At the head of the stairs stood Bad Tom, her nemesis, with his cronies. She straightened her back, noticed that even though he was supposedly off-duty he was still fully armed, wearing full harness but for the gauntlets and the bassinet, which sat together on the plank table. She noted that his armour was as carefully polished as her own.

  He was talking to Bent, and they were smiling.

  She met their looks and glared. ‘What?’

  ‘Your people look good enough for the Royal Guard,’ Tom said with a rich chuckle.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ she spat. She looked past him, over the walled balcony that let light and air into the tower from the courtyard. She could see the priest from here, climbing out on the wall. She wondered what he was doing there.

  Bent slapped his thigh and roared. ‘Told you!’ he shouted, and went back to his game, and she forgot Father Henry. ‘Can’t even take a fucking compliment.’

  She glared at both of them and went to the roof to watch her posts. ‘Where are all the men-at-arms? Captain left a note-’

  Tom nodded to her. ‘I’ve got it, Corporal. I’m preparing the sortie.’

  Sauce felt a keen disappointment edged with anger. ‘A sortie? But-’

  ‘You have the duty,’ Tom said. ‘It’s my turn.’

  ’It’s always your turn,’ she shot back.

  He nodded, unrepentant. ‘I’m primus pilus, Sauce. I can take the sortie out until Christ returns to earth – maybe after. Wait your turn. Sweeting.’

  She drew herself up. But Bad Tom shook his head.’Nay – never mind me, Sauce. That was ill-said. But I want the sorties. The lads need to see me fight.’

  ‘And you love it,’ Sauce said. She put her nose very close to his. ‘I love it too, you bastard.’

  Tom laughed. ‘Point taken, Corporal.’

  She backed off. ‘I want my turn. Anyway – where is everyone?’

  ‘The boys are all off confessing to the priest. Don’t worry, Sauce. We probably won’t go. But there’s going to be a sortie ready all night, every night, in the covered way.’