The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  The code won.

  Lachlan heard the grunt that signified their refusal, and he had both hands on his sword, swinging a heavy overhand blow at the nearest man. He had a sword in his hand, but was too slow to save his own life; the heavy swing batted his parry aside and cut through his skull from left eyebrow to right jaw, so that the top of his head spun away, cleanly severed.

  Hector’s own men started to come forward, abandoning their places with his herd. Which meant that when this was over, with all the attending noise, violence, blood and ordure, a day would be lost while they collected all the beasts who ran off into the glens and valleys.

  Someone – some ancient philosopher Lachlan couldn’t remember from the days when a priest came to teach him letters – had said that the hillmen would conquer the world, if only they would ever stop fighting among themselves.

  He pondered that as he killed his third man of the day, as his retinue charged with a shout, and as the doomed men of the toll gate tried to make a stand and were cut down.

  Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

  The camp below the Abbey vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the tents folded and packed into the wagons, the wagons double-teamed and hauled up the steep slope into the fortress.

  The first chore that face all of them was billeting the company. Captain and Abbess walked quickly through the dormitory, the great hall, the chapel, the stables, and the storehouses, adding, dividing, and allocating.

  ‘I will need to bring all my people in, of course,’ the Abbess said.

  The captain bit his lip and looked at the courtyard. ‘Eventually, we may have to re-erect our tents here,’ he said. ‘Will you use the Great Hall?’

  ‘Of course. It’s being stripped even now,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘It is Lent – all of our valuables are put away already.’

  One of the company’s great wagons was just crossing the threshold of the main gate. Its top just fitted under the lintel.

  ‘Show me your stores and all your storage places,’ he said.

  She led him from cellar to cellar, from store room to the long, winding, airless steps that led deep into the heart of the living rock under their feet, to where a fresh spring burbled away into a pool the size of a farm pond. She was slower coming back up the winding steps than she had been going down.

  He waited with her when she stopped to rest.

  ‘Is there an exit? Down there?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Of course – who would hollow out this mountain and not make one? But I haven’t the strength to show you.’ They reemerged through the secret door behind the chapel altar, and the Abbess was immediately surrounded by grey-clad sisters, each demanding her attention – matters of altar care, of flowers for the next service, of complaints about the rain of blasphemous oaths falling from the walls, now fully manned.

  ‘All you cock suckers get your fucking arses in armour or I’ll chew off the top of your sodding skulls and fuck your brains,’ Bad Tom was dressing down a dozen men-at-arms just going onto the wall. His tone was conversational and yet it fell into a moment of silence and was carried everywhere inside the fortress.

  An older sister stared at her Abbess in mute appeal.

  ‘Your sisters are silent,’ the captain said.

  The Abbess nodded. ‘All are allowed to speak on Sundays. Novices and seniors may speak when they are moved to – which is seldom for seniors and often for novices.’ She made a gesture with her hands. ‘I am their ambassador to the world.’ She pointed at the cowled figure who followed her. ‘This is Sister Miram, my chancellor and my vicar. She is also allowed to speak.’

  The captain bowed to Sister Miram, who inclined her head slightly.

  The Abbess nodded. ‘But she prefers not to.’

  Whereas you – the captain thought that perhaps she liked to speak more than she let on, and liked to talk to him, to have an adult to spar with. Yet he did not doubt her piety. To the captain, piety came in three brands – false piety, hypocritical piety, and hard won, deep and genuine piety. He fancied that he could tell them apart.

  At the far end of the chapel stood Father Henry. He looked harried – hadn’t bathed or shaved, the captain suspected. He looked at the Abbess. ‘Your priest is in a bad way,’ he said.

  He knew that she had cast a phantasm on him last night. She’d done it expertly, and so revealed she was more than a mere mathematical astrologer. She was a magus. She’d probably known the instant he cast his glamour in her yard, and on her sisters.

  And she was not the only magus. There were wheels within the wheels that powered this situation. He looked at Sister Miram, his sense of power reaching tentatively towards her, like a third hand.

  Aha. It was as if Sister Miram had slapped that hand.

  The Abbess was looking at the priest. ‘He’s in love with me,’ she said dismissively. ‘My final lover. Gentle Jesu, might you not have sent me someone handsome and gentle?’ She turned and smiled wryly. ‘I suspect he was sent me as a penance. And a reminder of what – of what I was.’ She shrugged. ‘The Knights of our Order didn’t send us a priest last winter, so I took him from a local parish. He seemed interesting. Instead, I find he’s—’ She paused. ‘Why am I telling you this, messire?’

  ‘As your captain, it is my duty to know,’ he said.

  She considered him. ‘He’s a typical ignorant parish priest – can scarcely read Archaic, knows the Bible only from memory, and thinks women are less than the dirt on his bare feet.’ She shook her head. ‘And yet he came here, and he is drawn to me.’

  The captain smiled at her, took her right hand between his and kissed it. ‘Perhaps I am your last lover,’ he said.

  As he did it, he saw the priest squirm. Oh, my, what fun. The man was loathsome, but his piety was probably genuine too.

  ‘Should I box your ears for that? I understand that’s the fashion,’ the Abbess said. ‘Please desist, Captain.’

  He retreated as if she’d struck him. Sister Miram was frowning.

  To regain his composure, he summoned Jehannes and Milus. ‘Get the drovers to dismantle the wagons. Put the hardware in the cellars – Abbess, we’re going to need some guides.’

  The Abbess sent for the old garrison – eight non-noble men-at-arms hired at the Great Fair a dozen years before. They were led by Michael Ranulfson, a grizzled giant with gentle manners, the sergeant at arms the captain had met briefly the night before.

  ‘You know that I’ve placed the captain in charge of our defence,’ she said. ‘His men need help moving in, and guides to the storerooms. Michael – I trust them.’

  Michael bowed his head respectfully, but his eyes said on your head be it.

  ‘How are you set for hoardings?’ the captain asked. ‘Do you have pre-cut lumber?’

  The old sergeant at arms nodded. ‘Aye. Hoardings, portable towers, a pair of trebuchets, some smaller engines.’ He rolled his head on his neck, as if trying to rid himself of a stiffness. ‘When you are in garrison, you may as like do a good job of work.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Thanks, Ser Michael.’

  ‘I’m no knight,’ Michael said. ‘My da was a skinner.’

  The captain ignored his statement to look at Jehannes. ‘As soon as the lads are unpacked, give this man fifty archers and all the riff-raff and get the hoardings up while the men-at-arms stand to.’

  Jehannes nodded, obviously in full agreement.

  ‘Store the dismantled wagons wherever the hoardings are now,’ the captain said. ‘And then we’ll start on patrols to fetch in the peasants. Gentlemen, this place is going to be packed as tight as a cask of new-salted mackerel. I want to say this in front of the Abbess. There will be no rape and no theft by our men. Death penalty on both. My lady, I can’t do much about casual blasphemy, but an effort will be made – you understand me, gentlemen? Make an effort.’

  She nodded. ‘It is Lent,’ she said.

  Jehannes nodded. ‘I gave up wine,’ he said, and then stared at the floor.
>
  ‘Jesu does not care what you give up, but rather, what you give him,’ Sister Miram replied, and Jehannes smiled shyly at her.

  She returned his smile.

  The captain released a heavy sigh. ‘Ladies, you may well cure all of our souls yet, but it must wait until the hoardings are up and all your people are safe. Michael, you are in charge of them. I recommend that my men live in the towers and galleries – if we have time, we’ll build them beds.’

  ‘My people will go four to a room,’ the Abbess said. ‘I can take the older girls and single women from the farms into the dormitory, and all the men and their families will go in the hall. Overflow into the stables.’

  Michael nodded. ‘Yes, my lady,’ he replied. He turned to the captain. ‘I’m at your orders.’ He looked back and forth. ‘Will we hold the Lower Town?’

  The captain stepped up onto the gate wall and looked down at the four streets of the town, a hundred feet below.

  ‘For a little while,’ he said.

  Albinkirk – Ser Alcaeus

  Ser Alcaeus passed a bad night and drank too much wine in the morning. The man whose daughter had been abducted sat in the garrison barracks and wept, and demanded that the garrison send out a sortie to her rescue.

  The mayor agreed with him, and hot words were exchanged.

  Alcaeus didn’t want any part of it. They were too alien – the commoners were both too servile and too free, and Ser John was no knight. Even the churches were wrong. Mass was said in low Archaic.

  It was disorienting. Worse than the convoy of slaves had been, because he could ignore them.

  Mid-morning, as he finished his ablutions – he, the Emperor’s cousin, washing without so much as a servant or slave to help him – he heard the mayor’s shrill voice in the guardroom, demanding that Ser John come out.

  Alcaeus dressed. He had spare shirts because the boy had saved his packhorse, and he’d see the page richly rewarded for it.

  ‘Come out of your hole, you doddering old coward!’ shrieked the mayor.

  Alcaeus was trying to lace his cuffs by himself. He had done his own in the past, but not since he became a man. He had to press his right hand against the stone of the castle wall and pin the knot in place.

  ‘Master Mayor?’ he heard. It was Ser John, his voice calm enough.

  ‘I demand that you gather all the useless mouths you call your garrison and go out and find this man’s daughter. And open the gates – the grain convoys are on their way. This town needs money, though I’m sure you’ve been too drunk to notice.’ The mayor sounded like a fishwife – a particularly nasty one.

  ‘No,’ said the captain. ‘Was that all?’

  Alcaeus couldn’t, in that moment, decide exactly what he thought of the knight. Over-cautious? But memories of yesterday’s ambush were still burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

  He reached for his boots – uncleaned, of course. He pulled them on, and fought with all the buckles, his head suddenly full of irks and boglins and worse things. The road. The confusion.

  He had been trained to fight the Wild. Until yesterday, he’d only fought other men – usually one to one, with knives, at court.

  The images in his head made him shudder.

  ‘I order you!’ the mayor screamed.

  ‘You can’t order me, Master Mayor. I have declared martial law, and I, not you, am the power here.’ Ser John sounded apologetic rather than dismissive.

  ‘I represent the people of the town. The burgesses, the merchants, and the artisans!’ The mayor’s voice sank to a hiss. ‘You don’t seem to understand—’

  ‘I understand that I represent the king. And you do not.’ Ser John’s voice remained level.

  Alcaeus had made his decision. He was going to go support the low-born knight. It didn’t matter what the two men were debating – it was their manners. Ser John was knightly. He might even survive at court.

  Alcaeus tested his feet in his boots, and took his heavy dagger and put it in his belt. He never left his rooms without a dagger. Then he went out into the hall – a hall crowded with garrison soldiers listening to the argument in the main room below. He ran light-footed down the stairs.

  He’d missed an exchange. When he entered, the mayor, red-faced, thin and tall and blond as an angel, was silent, his mouth working.

  Ser Alcaeus went and stood behind the old knight. He noted that the mayor wore a rich doublet of dark blue velvet trimmed in sable, and a cap to match, embroidered with irks and rabbits. He smiled – his own silk doublet was worth about fifty times the value of the mayor’s.

  The irks in the mayor’s cap were ironic, to say the least.

  ‘This is Ser Alcaeus,’ Ser John said. ‘The Emperor’s ambassador to our king. Yesterday his convoy was attacked by hundreds of Wild creatures.’

  The mayor shot a venomous glance at him. ‘So you say. Go do your fucking job, sell-sword. Aren’t you even a little humiliated to think that this man’s daughter is the plaything of monsters while you sit and drink wine?’

  The man – who stood behind the mayor with a dozen other men – gave a sob and sank to a wooden bench, his fist in his mouth.

  ‘His daughter has been dead since yesterday and I won’t risk men to look for her corpse,’ Ser John said with casual brutality. ‘I want all the woman and children moved to the castle immediately, with victuals.’

  The mayor spat. ‘I forbid it. Do you want to panic the town?’

  Ser John shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In my professional opinion—’

  ‘You have no professional opinion. You were a sell-sword – what? Forty years ago? And then a drinking crony of the king’s. Very professional!’ The mayor was beside himself.

  Alcaeus realised the man was afraid. Terrified. And that terror made him belligerent. It was a revelation. Alcaeus was not, strictly speaking, a young man. He was twenty-nine, and he thought he knew how the world worked.

  Yesterday had been a shock. And now today was a shock too. He watched the fool mayor, and watched Ser John, and understood something of their quality.

  ‘Messire mayor?’ he asked in his stilted Gothic. ‘Please – I am a stranger here. But the Wild is real. What I saw was real.’

  The mayor turned and looked at him. ‘And who in God’s name are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Alcaeus Comnena, cousin to the Emperor Manual, may his name be praised, the drawn sword of Christ, the Warrior of the Dawn.’ Alcaeus bowed. His cousin was too old to draw a sword but his titles rolled off the tongue, and he was annoyed by the mayor.

  The mayor was, for all his belligerence and terror, a merchant and an educated man. ‘From Morea?’ he asked.

  Alcaeus thought of telling this barbarian what he thought of their casual use of Morea for the Empire. But he didn’t bother. ‘Yes,’ he shot back.

  The mayor drew a breath. ‘Then if you are a true knight, you will go and rescue this man’s daughter.’

  Alcaeus shook his head. ‘No. Ser John is correct. You must call in your out-farmers and move the people into the castle.’

  The mayor shook his fist. ‘The convoys are coming. If we close the gates, this town will die!’ He paused. ‘For the love of God! There’s money involved.’

  Ser John shrugged. ‘I hope the money helps when the boglins come,’ he said.

  As if on cue, an alarm bell sounded.

  After the mayor pounded out of the castle, Alcaeus went out on the wall and saw two farms burning. Ser John joined him. ‘I told him to bring the people in last night,’ he muttered. ‘Fucking idiot. Thanks for trying.’

  Alcaeus watched the plumes of smoke rise and his stomach did flips. Suddenly, again, he was seeing those the irks under his horse. He had once, single-handed, fought off four assassins who were going for his mother. Irks were much, much worse. He tasted bile.

  He thought of lying down.

  Instead, he drank wine. After a cup, he felt strong enough to visit his page, who was recovering from terror in the resilient way teenagers
so. He left his page to cuddle with a servant girl and walked wearily back to the guard room, where there was an open cask of wine.

  He was on his fourth when Ser John’s fist closed around his cup. ‘I take it you are a belted knight,’ Ser John said. ‘I saw your sword, and you’ve used it. Eh?’

  Ser Alcaeus got up from his chair. ‘You dared draw my sword?’ he asked. At the Emperor’s court touching a man’s sword was an offence.

  The old man grinned mirthlessly. ‘Listen, messire. This town is about to be attacked. I never thought to see it in my lifetime. I gather you had a bad day yesterday. Fine. Now I need you to stop draining my stock of wine and get your armour on. They’ll go for the walls in about an hour, unless I miss my guess.’ He looked around the empty garrison room. ‘If we fight like fucking heroes and every man does everything he can, we might just make it – I’m still trying to get that fool to send the women into the castle. This is the Wild, Ser Knight. I gather you’ve tasted their mettle. Well – here they come again.’

  Ser Alcaeus thought that this was a far, far cry from being a useful functionary at his uncle’s court. And he wondered if his true duty, given the message he had in his wallet, was to gather his page and ride south before the roads closed.

  But there was something about the old man. And besides, the day before he’d run like a coward, even if he’d had the blood of three of the things on his sword first.

  ‘I’ll arm,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Ser John said. ‘I’ll help, and then I’ll give you a wall to command.’

  Abbington-on-the-Carak – Mag the Seamstress

  Old Mag the seamstress sat in the good, warm sunshine on her doorstep, her back braced against the oak of her door frame, as she had sat for almost forty years of such mornings. She sat and sewed.

  Mag wasn’t a proud woman, but she had a certain place, and she knew it. Women came to her for advice on childbirth and savings, on drunken husbands, on whether or not to let a certain man visit on a certain night. Mag knew things.