Gaston surprised himself by clasping the man’s arm, as if they were both knights.
‘Surely it is a crime against both the King and Church to trade mirrors to the irks.’
The old archer grinned. ‘It’s a crime to shoot Lord Edward’s deer. It’s a crime to take rabbits in his warrens. It’s a crime to leave my steading without his leave.’ The archer shrugged. ‘I live a life of crime, m’lord. Most low-born do.’
Gaston found himself smiling. The man was really very likeable. ‘But your immortal soul,’ he began softly.
The old man pursed his lips and blew out a puff of air. ‘You’re easy to talk to, foreigner. But I don’t need to debate my mortal soul with the likes of ye.’
‘But you are willing to speak with evil.’ Gaston shook his head.
The archer gave him a wry smile. ‘Are all the men you know so very good, m’lord?’
Gaston winced.
‘Stands to reason all the irks ain’t bad, don’t it?’ he went on. ‘What if none of ’em is bad? Eh? What if there’s no power on earth as bad as a bad lord?’
Gaston shook his head. ‘What bad lord? This is rebel talk.’
‘Rest easy, m’lord, I’m no Jack.’ The old man sneered. ‘Boys playing at causes. And broken men and traitors.’ He nodded. ‘Some good archers, though.’
‘Let’s say I’m coming around a little to your way of thinking,’ he said carefully. ‘I would like to confess that I want to go home.’
‘Knew you was a man of sense.’ Redmede laughed. He looked under his hand and shook his head. Pointed at an archer, asleep. ‘Swarthy, you useless sack of shit, get off your arse and work.’
Gaston turned and saw the young archer trying to hide in the ditch. He was all huddled up, as if by being very small, he could avoid the old man’s wrath.
‘Now I’m the master-archer, and I wear myself out riding these boys.’ He laughed.
Gaston didn’t think he looked worn out.
Redmede stepped closer to the ditch and bellowed, ‘Swarthy!’ at the young man.
He paused and in a moment Gaston saw what he saw.
The boy was eviscerated. And very, very dead.
‘Damn,’ the old archer said.
West of Albinkirk – Galahad Acon
Galahad Acon had never been so cold for so long, and he lay as still as he could lie, watching . . .
Well, watching nothing at all. Watching the woods. A breath of breeze stirred, moving the new leaves, and the light rain fell and fell. Despite a wool jupon and a wool cote over it, with a heavy wool cloak over all, he was soaked to his linen shirt and colder than he was when riding through heavy snow in December.
The Prior had left him to watch at the first grey light of dawn. Had said he’d be back.
He’d taken Diccon with him.
As time went by, his fancies grew darker and darker. Why would they ride off and leave him?
He had a fire kit. But the Prior had been very forceful on the subject of fires.
I’m going to freeze to death.
For the thousandth time, a twig cracked in front of him.
Galahad wondered how twigs could just crack, in the woods.
A bird fluttered in the wet leaves, and made a low thrumming sound – and then burst out of the leaves and leaped into the air.
Something had just moved.
Galahad felt his blood still in his veins.
He scanned his eyes frantically back and forth.
Oh good sweet Virgin Mary now and in the hour of my death amen.
They were almost silent – filing along the streambed at the base of the low hill.
But there were hundreds of them.
Oh my god dear god ohmygod
In the lead was a willowy daemon, all black, which moved like an embodiment of shadow, flitting rather than walking. Behind him, came the hosts of hell, walking, strutting, shambling-
Galahad found he could neither watch nor turn his head away. That when he closed his eyes, he couldn’t picture exactly what they looked like.
He couldn’t make his mind work. Run? Stay? He was fear.
They moved along the watercourse, and they scarcely moved the leaves. They travelled quickly, passing from left to right before him.
Eventually, he realised they weren’t going to turn and rend him limb from limb. But that didn’t stop his breath from coming in low pants, nor the deep cold from settling into his bones.
And then they were gone, away to the north, towards the river.
It was a long time before his breathing returned to normal.
When the Prior found him, at sunset, still lying there, he burst into tears.
The Prior embraced him. ‘I’m sorry,’ the mailed knight said. ‘You did well.’
Galahad was ashamed of his tears, but he couldn’t stop them.
‘They got between us and you,’ the Prior went on. ‘I couldn’t risk my knights for you. That – that is how it is, out here.’ He patted Galahad. ‘You did very well.’
They moved camp, in the same silence that the knights did everything. They went north, and Galahad saw that the tracks made by the daemons had the shape of human feet. He looked very closely, and he couldn’t see anything but bare feet and soft shoes.
A young Thomasine nodded to him. He cleared his throat quietly and leaned close. ‘Sossag,’ he said.
Galahad knew enough to knew that the knight was honouring him by speaking.
‘I thought they were daemons.’ He looked at the knight.
The young man shook his head. Put a finger to his lips, and rode on.
That night, Diccon put an arm around him. ‘Sorry, lad. It should hae’ been me left with the baggage. I don’t even know why we’re here.’
The Prior came and offered each of them a cup of warm mead. He sat on his heels, still armed from head to toe in plate and chain.
‘You are here to take my news to the king – when I have news.’ He looked back and forth. ‘Tomorrow.’
Diccon drank his mead. ‘What did you learn today?’
‘The fortress still holds,’ the Prior said. ‘And holds the bridge, as well. The Abbess has done far better than I expected of her, and I owe her an apology.’ He smiled at Galahad. ‘The trouble with a vow of silence is that it leaves you vulnerable to talk,’ he said.
Diccon nodded. ‘I’ll ride at first light.’
The Prior shook his head. ‘The woods this side of the river are full of the enemy. Sossag, Abenacki, irks, boglins and worse.’ He shook his head. ‘Tomorrow night we’ll make a demonstration. A loud demonstration. We will draw every creature of darkness like-’ he smiled ‘-like moths to a flame.’ He nodded. ‘Then you’ll ride.’
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
Just a few leagues north of the hillock where the Prior camped, the captain stood in the castle gateway with the Abbess. Behind him were most of the men-at-arms, led by Jehannes, and twenty squires and valets led by Jacques. Every man wore a nun’s habit over his harness.
He gathered them in a circle.
‘What a very scary passel of nuns we make,’ he said. ‘The order of Saint Thomas will need to be a little more careful in their selection process.’
The Abbess laughed. The men going on the sortie managed a sort of nervous titter.
‘This needs to be fast, so listen up. It’s like taking a town in Galle. Sneak to the wall. Ladders up on the whistle. That’s all there is. When you are in, head for the towers at the gate. We get the lads there and back we come. Don’t leave your wounded behind. You know all this.’ He grinned. Turned to Ser Michael, the sergeant of the original garrison. ‘You must keep the gate open until the sortie returns. But don’t leave it open for a few men. You hear me? When the sortie is in, close the gate.’ He turned to No Head. ‘When you see my blue fire pound the town. Everything you have.’
No Head nodded. ‘The Bridge Castle has the word, too.’
Beside him, Harmodius crossed his arms. And winked.
The captain nodded. ‘You all know Tom would come to get you. Let’s go get Tom.’
A murmur.
He jumped down from his barrel, and led the way – not to the gate, but to the dispensary stairs, and the Abbess walked with him.
She led them through the lower dispensary, and then down steep steps to a basement, and then down another set to a well – a spring in the deep hillside, a cleft off to the right with lights burning.
The captain could feel an immense welling of power. Raw power. Neither gold nor green.
He reached into the well and filled himself.
You are much stronger, Prudentia said. But not as strong as he is.
I know.
You don’t. You are arrogant. You are outmatched.
Fine. Yes, I know.
Fool! she spat.
He dropped back into the cleft and came to a long storage room, packed to the rafters with wagon sides and barrels of pork.
It took long minutes for men to shift the wagon beds.
There was a door behind them.
The Abbess drew a key from her girdle. Their eyes met.
‘Now you know all my secrets,’ she whispered.
‘I doubt it,’ he said, and kissed her hand.
‘I am quite sure I should not give you this,’ she said. She smiled bitterly and handed him a small scrap of curled parchment, hard as an old leaf in his hand. Smooth as a woman’s skin.
‘I could disapprove, as her spiritual mother,’ the Abbess went on. ‘I could just be a jealous woman.’ She shrugged. ‘Sister Miram brought this note to me and confessed that she had passed another.’ She met his eyes. ‘Amicia is not for you, Captain. She is greater – far greater – than we.’
He smiled. ‘That is not what I expected you to say.’ He bowed. ‘I beg your indulgence.’ He turned aside, and held the scrap up to a torch on the wall in a clamp. He read, and he couldn’t control the smile that crossed his face.
Your gate is closed.
Meet me.
He turned back to the Abbess.
She shook her head. ‘You are glowing.’
‘How is she greater?’ the captain asked.
The column had begun to move. The door was open, and the lower door, too.
He kissed her hand again. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘You have brought me no peace, young man.’ She waved her hand. ‘Go – kill our enemies. Triumph.’ She sounded tired.
He turned and all but leaped down the steps. On his way he stopped to touch the favour he wore on his shoulder.
Amicia felt him, like a touch on her cheek.
She smiled, and went back to tearing linen into strips.
I’m a fool, she thought.
The company went down through the Abbess’s passage and entered a maze of stone corridors.
To those who knew what to look for, it was obvious that men had not made these curving corridors.
But they were empty, although, to the captain, every yard of them reeked of the power that had been used in storming them. More than a hundred years ago. More than two hundred years.
And still the power lingered, like the smell of smoke after a fire.
Eventually, the Abbess’s will-o-wisp led them to a double door of oak, bound with iron, copper, and silver. To the captain’s eye, it was covered in sigils – powerful wards drawn Hermetically.
He’d never seen anything like it.
She’d given him the key.
He held it with renewed respect.
Some of the lads were very much on edge. An hour in silent, haunted corridors deep under the earth isn’t the best preparation for combat. The sounds behind him were of men on the edge of panic.
He turned, and cast a soft light.
‘Ready, friends?’ he asked softly.
More and more men stumbled into the antechamber in front of the great doors.
‘We’ll come out into the chapel of the Lower Town,’ he said. ‘The roof is collapsed. Don’t run. Out here a rolled ankle is a death sentence and we’re not coming back this way. So don’t linger.’ He couldn’t explain why.
He was about to open the fortress’s Hermetic defences, for a moment.
He imbued his voice with calm. Humour. Normalcy.
‘Let’s go get Tom,’ he said. He smiled at Jehannes, who, praise be, smiled back.
And he turned the key.
North of Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn felt the change. He was busy resighting his battery, wishing again that he had a mathematician or an engineer – some reliable human calculator who could command the tedious business of putting the great rocks on target. Exrech had proven uninterested. And far too slow. Unwilling to build anything.
He watched the boglins dig, raising a new mound out of range of the new machine on the fortress. He knew this new battery represented a heavy defeat in time and effort.
He was trying not to acknowledge that he had to go into the debatable ground and destroy the fortress’ new machine with his own power. He had no other weapon available with the necessary reach. And he would have to squander power like an angry boy to breach the fortress’s millennium-old defences.
That would leave him weak.
And then he felt the shift. He tasted the air – wasted valuable time sending a raven stooping over the walls, and he saw the nimbus of fire on his former apprentice’s hands, saw the great engine cranked all the way back, saw-
– nothing.
His raven was struck by an arrow, and tumbled out of the air.
He cursed, disoriented by the loss of his connection. Reached for another-
The fortress’s defences were down.
He stepped out from behind his new siege mound. Raised an arm, and let fly a bolt of pure green lightning.
And he laughed.
Lissen Carak – Harmodius
Harmodius threw a shield in front of the lightning, like a knight making a parry in the tiltyard, and the two castings extinguished each other with a flash of light.
Harmodius stumbled and had to reach for the well of power at his feet. ‘Sweet Lord have mercy,’ he mumbled.
One blow. Thorn could empty him of power in a single blow.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
The captain was first out the gate, and Jehannes was on his heels, leading his party of men-at-arms to the right and out of the chapel.
The nave was full of sleeping boglins.
The killing began.
He counted the armoured shapes coursing past him, lost count in the middle, and had to guess.
But Sauce was true to her promise. She was last.
‘Last out!’ she called, and danced off to the right around the gate.
The captain slammed the great doors shut, with the key inside.
As the two doors met, their power meshed, and the gate vanished, leaving a black stone wall behind the altar, only the shape of the two doors burned onto his retinas remaining.
Bent and the archers were clearing the nave.
Jehannes was already gone over the broken wall.
The captain began to cut his way to the front of the church.
Thorn cast his second levin bolt, and then, without pausing to gather power, he cast a third.
Lissen Carak – Harmodius
Harmodius’s second defence was more refined than his first – a working of his own, weaker than Thorn’s but deflective rather than resisting. Thorn’s strike bent like a beam of light in a prism and blew a piece of slate the size of a small barn off the side of the ridge.
His third cover was not quite fast enough – he intended to cast a single line of power like a sword parry – but Thorn’s speed left him too late, and he tried to widen his cast, with too little power.
He still stopped most of it.
The rest fell on the curtain wall to his left. A section of wooden hoardings twenty paces long burned in a flash, and a section of the wall cracked and fell outward, killing two archers i
nstantly and crushing the two older Lanthorn men to pulp.
Harmodius felt them die.
His failure made him angry, and anger made him lash out. His riposte was pitiful, small, weak, too late.
It was also entirely unexpected. Like a slow attack in a sword fight, his flare of anger sailed out into the dark and caught Thorn unprepared.
Pain enraged Thorn. It always had.
He struck back.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
The Lower Town square was carpeted in corpses. The captain passed in the chapel doorway looking for his men-at-arms. The archers were spreading out, right and left.
‘On me,’ he said. ‘Let’s go!’ He ran across the square, and they pounded along behind him.
Parties with ladders broke off and headed east, through the rubble.
He could hear fighting to this left, and more straight ahead. Angelo di Laternum materialized out of the darkness.
‘Ser Jehannes prays your aid,’ he said formally.
‘On me,’ the captain said, and followed the squire. The captain had no time to comment that Jehannes was off course.
A vast burst of light lit the sky, like all the summer lightning ever seen combined in one single burst. The levin flash showed the captain that Squire Angelo was bleeding from the shoulders of his harness; the archers were splashed in red and black and, ahead of him, Jehannes’s men-at-arms were caught in the flash, illuminated like a manuscript illustration of knights fighting monsters.
‘Ware!’ the captain shouted. ‘Daemons!’
The terror struck him like a heavy mall. He set his teeth and pushed himself forward through the terror, and one of the things turned on him with its supernatural speed.
The captain had supernatural speed, too.
The daemon’s blade met his, so hard that sparks flew from his blade, and he yielded before the creature’s awesome strength, rotated his blade around the fulcrum of his armoured wrist, stepped inside its terror and pushed his point into its brain.
It fell away off his sword, and he was on the next. It turned its head – its beautiful eyes catching his.
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