He looked tired. And heroic.
She couldn’t watch.
She couldn’t look away.
The guardian struck with two axes, cutting with both at the same time – something a mere man could never hope to do.
He stepped forward and to the right, and smashed an axe to the ground; the guardian stepped back. She saw it draw power. Guardians were not like men in any way except for their love of beauty. It took in power as if breathing – a natural movement – and then it snapped its working at the knight.
Who turned it. Then he stepped forward, and raised his sword slowly, an elaborate gesture like a salute.
Achieved his guard.
And froze.
The guardian raised its axes.
And froze.
Time stopped.
She couldn’t breathe.
When one of them moved, it would be over.
The Ings of the Albin – Ranald Lachlan
Donald came and sat on a rock by Ranald’s tiny fire. Half their force was out on picket – the men cooking breakfast spoke in low tones.
‘I’ve a notion,’ Donald said.
Ranald ate a piece of bacon, and raised an eyebrow. He was feeling better. More alive. Ian the Old had made him angry, pissing in the stream where they got drinking water.
Yesterday nothing had made him angry, so he savoured that anger as a sign he was alive.
All those thoughts flitted through his head while he chewed, and then he nodded. ‘I thought I smelled smoke,’ he said, and managed a smile – another triumph.
Donald leaned back. ‘None of yer sass, now. And you half my age.’ He grinned. ‘I think we should push the herd for Albinkirk. It is only twelve leagues, or like enough as makes no difference.’
Ranald was alive enough, and enough of a hillman, to be taken with the boldness of it. ‘Right over the same terrain where we fought the Sossag?’ he said. He shrugged.
‘They’re gone, Ranald. Nobody’s seen dick of them for three days. Not a feather, not a scout, not a bare buttock. It’s their way. They don’t hold ground.’ Donald leaned forward. ‘What’s the herd worth at the Inn? A silver penny a head or less? And it’s a far longer walk to the Inn than it is to Albinkirk.’
Ranald stared into the flames of his small birch bark fire. He added leaves from a pouch at his belt to his copper cup full of water, stirred honey in, drank it, and gave a quiet thanks to God. His belief in God had suffered – or maybe not. He wasn’t entirely sure.
I was dead.
Hard to take. Better not to think of it. Except that, in some horrible way, he could remember the deadness. He didn’t want to be dead again.
He sighed. ‘Daring,’ he said. But from Albinkirk he could send a messenger to the king. He owed the king that much. More. He sighed.
Donald’s eyes sparkled. ‘Let’s do it.’
Ranald knew that the older man needed to perform a deed of arms if only to justify the fact that he had lived and Hector had died.
But deep inside, he shared the feeling. And if they could get the herd through – why, then Sarah Lachlan would be rich, and all the little crofters and herders in the Hills would get their shares, and the Death of Hector Lachlan would be a song with a happy ending.
He drank off the last of his scalding tea, and watched the stream. ‘We’re loons. And some of the boys may “decline to accompany us”.’ He gave the last words a distinctive Alban accent.
Donald chortled. ‘Good to see you coming back to yourself. Faeries brought my Godmother back from dead – did you know that? Took her months to laugh again, but then she was dead a whole day.’ He shrugged.
Ranald gave a little shudder. ‘Ouch,’ he muttered.
‘Oh, no. She said that having been dead, life was always sweet.’ He nodded.
Ranald was still thinking of that when the herd lumbered into motion, headed west. The boys had muttered about it but none of them turned for home.
Four hours they moved west, down the old drove road through increasingly wooded country. The west slope of the Morean Mountains had been farmed once – grape vines still grew over the new trees, and they passed a dozen farmsteads standing open-roofed and abandoned. None were burned. Men had simply left, one day, and not returned.
Ranald had seen it all before. But now he noticed it more.
That evening, they made camp under the Ings of the Albin. They’d pressed the herd hard and come twenty leagues or better, and the young men were exhausted enough that Donald made up a new duty list, writing slowly and carefully on his wax tablet, making signs for some men and writing the names of others in the old way.
Kenneth Holiot was not a bard, but they all knew the boy could play, and that night he sang a few lines to his father’s old lyre, and shook his head, and laid down a few more. He was writing the song of the Death of Hector. He knew the death of another Hector, in Archaic, and he had the bit in his teeth – he was going to write the song.
After an hour he cursed and went off into the darkness.
Ranald cried.
The other men just let him cry, and when he was cried out, Donald came and put a hand on his shoulder, and then he rolled up in his cloak and went to sleep.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
He watched his adversary, and waited to die.
His shoulder was bleeding. His face was bleeding. Jehannes was somewhere half a pace behind him, he didn’t dare try to retreat, and for some reason his people seemed to think he wanted this to be a single combat.
Warm blood ran down his side.
The effort of holding his sword above his head in the Guard of the Window would eventually be too much. He would have to strike, and that would be the end.
It was faster and stronger than he was. He’d tried attacking, tried thrusting, tried most of his tricks. They all required some advantage – reach, perhaps – that he just didn’t have.
The daemon just stood there, two axes above its head.
And then, as sudden as its attack had come, its eyes slipped past him and with a shrug it was gone. The air popped as it displaced itself.
He was damned if he was going to fall over. He stood there looking at an empty road down the hill, and the fires of hell raging in the Lower Town.
He turned around, and Michael had Jehannes under the armpits and was dragging the knight up the path.
Cuddy stood just behind him, with his bow at full draw. Very slowly, the archer let the tension out of the limbs, and the great bow returned to shape. He dropped the arrow back into the quiver at his belt.
‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘You wasn’t going to win that one.’
The captain laughed. He laughed and laughed as they pulled him through the gate and slammed it shut, ands Ser Michael lowered the great iron portcullis.
He slapped Cuddy weakly on the backplate. ‘Nor was I,’ he said.
Then Michael had his helmet off his head, and he was sucking in great gouts of fresh, cool air. A dozen men were pulling at his armour.
He saw the Abbess. Saw Harmodius, who grinned at him.
Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight!
He drank it all in for a moment, and then, as his breast and backplate came off, he got to his feet. The men stripping him grinned and backed away, but their grins faltered when they saw how much blood was running down his side.
He nodded, waved, and ran, unarmed, unaware of his wounds, into the crowd and seemed to vanish. He didn’t see Amicia. But he’d felt her there.
He went to find her.
She was waiting for him under the apple tree.
She bit her lip.
‘I won’t talk,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I—’
She pushed him down on the bench with a strong arm, and bent – he hoped, to kiss him. But his hope was cheated. He felt her breath, hot, moist, fraught with magic, on his face and felt his wound heel. She raised her hands like a priest invoking the deity and he saw the power all around her, the well below the tree, the ten
drils that connected her to her sisters in the choir and to the Abbess.
She reached a hand under his arming doublet and her touch was cold as ice. Her hand passed over his chest and his back arched in agony as she touched the edge of his wound – one he hadn’t felt.
‘Silly,’ she said. He felt the power go out of her, into his shoulder. For a moment, briefer than a single heartbeat, the pain was infinite. And for that moment, he was her. She was him.
He lay back. To his shame, a whimper escaped his lips.
She leaned over him, her hair covering his face. Her lips brushed his. ‘Men will die if I stay with you,’ she said.
And she was gone.
Lissen Carak – Michael
The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Twelve
Last night the watch came and relieved the garrison of the Lower Town. The Red Knight led the watch in person. All the garrison were rescued, but brave knights and men-at-arms were killed and wounded, and the Lower Town, in the end, was lost. The Enemy has limitless creatures.
Michael looked at the parchment and tried to think what he could write. Shook his head, and went to find Kaitlin, who’s father had died when the curtain wall fell.
In the first light, three wyverns came out of the rising sun carrying rocks the size of a man’s head in their claws.
They came in high, and dived almost straight on the trebuchet.
The watch was just changing and the soldiers were completely unready. The ongoing watch was already tired, the offgoing watch was exhausted, and no one reacted in time.
Before No Head could even rotate the ballista the first monster’s claws opened, and his rock fell – struck the stump of the tower a few paces from the engine, and bounced away with a crack like lightning to fall harmlessly to the hillside below.
The second wyvern dropped lower, wings folded against his back, but he opened his wings too early, bobbed, and his rock went sailing away to kill one of the hundreds of sheep who were still penned on the ridge.
The third wyvern was the oldest and the canniest. It swooped off the target Thorn had intended and laid its rock almost gently on the ballista, smashing the engine and throwing No Head off the tower.
The archer shrieked and grabbed at the gargoyles of the hospital balcony as he fell.
The wyverns swept away.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
An hour later the wyverns were back. This time all three imitated the eldest, coming lower along the ridge and rising on the last thermal before the walls of the fortress to unleash their missiles at point blank range.
This time they were met by a hail of darts, bolts and arrows, loosed from every corner of the courtyard, the towers, and even the hospital balcony.
All three were hit, and flew away, angry and unsuccessful.
Their stones knocked a hole in the captain’s Commandery, killed two nuns in the hospital, and crushed a war horse and a squire in the stable.
The captain slept through it.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
He didn’t wake until late afternoon. He awoke in the comfort of his own room, although it felt odd. Air was moving around him.
Someone had fixed blankets and an old tapestry over a hole the size of a cart. A hole in the wall that went right through to the outside air.
His little porch was gone, too.
He got his feet on the floor, and Toby Pardieu had his clothes laid out on the press, and long leather boots over his arm, clean and black.
His knight’s belt was polished, shining like something hermetical.
‘Which the Abbess has invited ye ta’ dinner,’ Toby said. ‘Master Michael is at his exercises.’
The captain groaned as his weight came on his thighs and hips, and just for a moment he had a flash of what old age might be like.
‘Ta semptress ha gi’in me these linens,’ Toby said. He pointed to a basket. ‘New, clean, an’ pressed. Shirts. Caps. Braes. Two pair black cloth hose.’ Toby pointed at the basket.
The captain ran his hands over a shirt. The stitches were neat, very small, almost perfectly even but not quite, almost a pattern. The seamstress had used an undyed thread on the glorious new white of the linen – so confident in her skills that the very slight contrast was itself a decoration. A very subtle declaration of skill. Subtle, like the power with which she’d imbued the garments.
He picked up the shirt. The power was golden – a bright, white gold, the colour of purity. The Sun.
The shirt didn’t burn him, nor did he expect it to. He’d found that out, years ago.
Toby interrupted his reverie. ‘Wine? Hot cider?’ he asked. He looked at the floor. ‘Cider is good,’ he mumbled.
‘Cider. And I’ll wear these new things, but with my scarlet cote, Toby. Black is for—’ He sighed. ‘Black is for other occasions.’
‘Sorry, my lord.’ Toby blushed.
‘How could you know? Any word on the wounded? How’s Bad Tom?’ He felt the crisp cleanness of the new white shirt. ‘I’ll have a bath before I dress, if you can arrange it.’
Toby nodded at the challenge. ‘Twa shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ He vanished. Reappeared. ‘Ser Thomas is up and about. An’ Ser Jehannes, as well.’
The captain heard the boy’s footsteps, running. The boy made him smile. Made him feel old.
He stripped out of his arming clothes. He had had them on for – hmm. Two days now, without rest?
The shirt was damp and warm and smelled bad. Not like sweat, but like old blood. There was a lot of blood in it. It had a tear, too, all the way down one side.
He had a mirror, somewhere in his kit. Michael had unpacked his malle and his scrip and the portmanteau he stored in the wagons – he rooted around, vaguely aware that evening was coming, and he wasn’t armed.
He found his bronze mirror in its travelling case, found his razor, and unfolded it from its fancy bronze handle. Looked in the mirror.
He’d forgotten the wound he’d taken last night. He had a long crease down the left side of his face which was still sweating a little blood. As soon as he looked at it, it started to hurt. It didn’t look bad. It merely hurt.
He shook his head. Felt fuzzy with post-combat shock, and the shock of what he’d just seen in the mirror.
He tried to look at the wound in his right shoulder. It was a dull ache, and he couldn’t locate it, despite the fact that his arming clothes were soaked in blood.
A bit more of a shock, that.
Stiff with blood would be more accurate.
He peeled his braes off. They were stuck to his crotch with blood and sweat, and where his leg met his groin, he had sweat sores. He stank.
Toby reappeared. ‘Which the bath is on its way, m’lord. I told Master Michael and Master Jacques you was awake.’
Jacques came through the door and sniffed.
Even naked, the captain still had authority. ‘Toby, take my arming cote out and air it. Give my linens to the laundress and ask her respectfully if they can be saved.’
Jacques was holding one of the new arming caps. ‘This is fine work. As good as court.’ He looked at Toby.
‘The tire woman. Mag.’ Toby shrugged. ‘She tol’ me what the captain had ordered of her. Did I do aught wrong?’
The captain shook his head. Jacques smiled. ‘I’ll go and pay her. And order my own,’ he said. ‘You are commanded to dinner with the Abbess,’ Jacques went on. ‘As are a number of other worthies. Best dress well and try to behave yourself.’
The captain rolled his eyes. After a pause, he said, ‘How bad is the wound on my back?’
Jacques looked at the back of his shoulder. ‘Healed,’ he said with professional finality.
Toby had the arming jacket over his arm.
The captain snatched at it and held it up.
The right arm had a slash that ran from just above the underarm voider of chain all the way down to the top of the underarm seam.
Jacques gave a sharp noise like a dog’s bark.
&nb
sp; ‘One of the daemons tagged me.’ The captain shrugged. ‘I slept . . . what a sleep!’ Suddenly he picked up the goblet by his bedside.
‘The pretty novice gave me a cordial I was to give you,’ Toby said. He cowered a little.
The captain found his wallet, a small miracle all by itself, and extracted a silver leopard. He snapped it across the room to young Toby, who scooped it out of the air.
‘I think I owe you a debt of thanks, young Toby,’ he said. ‘Now – bath.’ He scratched himself.
Out in the yard he could see that there were men with swords and bucklers, practising. He walked across the room, and peeled back a corner of the tapestry to gaze out over the fields, the sheepfolds, and the smoking ruin of Lower Town.
‘Wyverns?’ he asked. He was still unbelievably tired.
‘Been pounding us with rocks all day,’ Jacques said cheerfully. ‘Gave No Head the fright of his life. Ballista is gone.’
‘He’s moving his engines again,’ the captain said. ‘No – he’s having boglins dig a new mound, but the engines are still safely out of range.’ The captain found he was scratching things that could not publicly be scratched, not even in front of servants.
‘I need to see Tom, if he’s up to it. With the day’s reports.’
Then he squeaked and ripped the coverlet off the bed as two farm girls appeared in the doorway with a tub of steaming water.
‘Coo!’ said the dark-haired one. ‘Nothing I ain’t seen before.’ She giggled, though, and the other girl blushed, and then they were gone.
But the water wasn’t gone.
‘I’ll wash myself, if you don’t mind,’ he told Jacques.
Jacques nodded. ‘You’re too old to be bathed.’ He counted the linens in the basket. ‘I’ll just go pay the lady, eh? And fetch Tom.’
‘Thanks, Jacques,’ said the captain. The water was hot – nearly boiling hot.
He got in anyway, hoping to scald some of the dirt and worse away. The captain was sure there was something crawling over him.
He had just immersed his torso – slowly – when there was a stir behind him.
The Red Knight Page 65
