King's Men

by Karen de Lange

after we arrived.' He broke the royal seal and unfolded the paper.

  Aidan's knuckles were white as he gripped the edge of the altar. 'What is it?'

  Mick held up the letter so Aidan could see the perfectly white sheet of paper. 'Blank,' he said.

  They heard the sound of heavy footsteps squelching through the mud at the same time. Both Aidan and Mick spun, their guns ready in their hands, as a man walked through the door. The newcomer was tall and bald, wearing dripping wet labourer's clothes, and seemed incongruously calm to be faced with two armed men.

  'You're late,' he said. 'And you really should set some kind of lookout.'

  'Godfrey!' Mick holstered his gun and strode down the chapel to embrace the newcomer. 'Don't sneak up on us like that; you'll get yourself killed.'

  'You could try.' Godfrey gestured to the shrouded figure on the altar. 'Father Clement?'

  Mick nodded.

  'Bloody shame. He was a good man. Hello, Aidan. Keeping well?'

  'Godfrey,' interrupted Mick. 'What happened here? The abbot said the king's men came for us. You and me both.'

  'You and me and anyone with us,' confirmed Godfrey. 'That would be Aidan too. Only you had to go and be late, didn't you?'

  'That wasn't our fault,' interjected Aidan.

  'Be that as it may,' continued Godfrey. 'They had a royal warrant to kill us all. Father Clement barred the doors against them, and they didn't like that very much. I only got out because they didn't expect any of the monks to know how to make a fist, let alone throw a punch. Grabbed these clothes on my way, shaved my tonsure off when I knew I was well away, and I've been waiting for you two to show up all day.' He rubbed his bald head self-consciously. 'I was hoping that you'd know what the hell happened.'

  Mick shook his head.

  'Damn. Some mistake, maybe?'

  'Not likely.' Aidan picked up the blank letter and held it out for Godfrey to inspect. 'That don't look accidental to me.'

  'Nor me.' Godfrey looked at the paper front and back, then let it fall to the floor.

  Mick tugged at his earring. 'The king's getting old,' he said. 'He sees shadows in every corner, ghosts in every shadow. He had the captain of the guard hanged for treason two months back.'

  'What? Big Brendan?' Godfrey snorted. 'My left shoe's more likely to be treasonous.'

  'And if the king decided Big Brendan can commit treason?' Mick left the words hanging in the air.

  For a long moment the only sound was the rain on the roof. 'Why does this shit always happen to us?' spat Aidan. 'First in Allevasse, then Dema, now bloody here. I'm sick and bloody tired of running away from people who want to bloody kill me.'

  'There's an alternative to running,' said Mick. 'Fight.'

  'Bollocks to running,' Godfrey snarled. 'I bloody hate it. We should end this on our own terms. Show the world what happens when a king tries to kill his own men.'

  'You're talking treason,' said Mick quietly.

  Godfrey shrugged. 'Don't see what difference it makes, myself. The king seems to think I'm guilty already. May as well prove him right; he'll never admit he's wrong.'

  Mick nodded. 'Aidan?'

  Aidan swallowed. 'You're in charge,' he said, eventually.

  'I am. We fight.'

  Night had fallen completely by the time they finished burying Father Clement. They left the monks in the crypt; there was nothing they could do for them. Once they were done, they scavenged what they could from the monastery and loaded up both ponies with supplies. They set off into the rain, three men leading two ponies, slipping on the mud under their feet.

  'There's a man I know who can get us a boat to Chalce,' Godfrey said. 'Down by the sea, maybe ten miles from here.'

  'Can he be trusted?' asked Aidan.

  'Aye.'

  They walked for a few moments in cold silence before Mick spoke. 'Then we go there,' he said. 'But before we set sail, I want to send a message to the king.'

  He could not see Aidan's face in the dark, but the astonished tone in his voice was enough. 'A message? What kind of bloody message? Gather the household guard, the lads are coming to get you?'

  Mick's smile was grim. 'A blank one,' he said.

  2. The City

  Dawn in Chalce. Mick walked the streets alone, his hands in his pockets. In one respect, walking alone through this part of the city in the half-light before sunrise was close to suicidal. In another, only a blind man would fail to spot the outline of his pistol beneath his jacket. Carrying a gun conferred a level of untouchability in a country where nobody else possessed any weaponry more advanced than a crossbow. Not to mention that it made them very employable – or so they had thought when they had arrived. Now it apparently made them very killable as well.

  His route took him past one of the city's three cathedrals. He stopped and watched from across the street as the priests filed in to sing matins, past the twin statues of the king flanking the great door. Mick's lip curled. The king who was worshipped as the representative of god on earth – a god Mick didn't even believe in. The king who renounced his name as he claimed his throne because the representative of god on earth needed no name – but Mick knew what it had been. The king who had gone insane, believing himself to be a representative of god on earth, and slaughtered an entire monastery full of monks who had only been there to worship him in the first place.

  Mick turned away. He walked until the sun cleared the horizon and the market-men were beginning to lay out their stalls, then turned his feet towards the river and the shed they had rented out at the quays. They were living, sleeping and eating there, the three of them in a space no larger than a small guardroom. Three weeks now. No wonder he needed some time to himself.

  The smell of fish hung in the air as he returned. It had pervaded all their belongings, their hair and clothes, to such an extent that Mick was no longer certain he would ever be free of it.

  'What's the craic?' Aidan asked through a mouthful of the cold soup he was eating for breakfast, as Mick entered the shed.

  'Slums are edgy as a knife. Uptown not much better.'

  'Good,' said Godfrey. 'Fucking uncivilised city. I want to go home.' His hair had grown out by a bare inch, bristling in every direction. Mick thought it gave him the look of a startled hedgehog, but knew better than to say so.

  'We'll go home just as soon as we can be certain we won't get knifed in our sleep when we get there.'

  'And find an employer with decent plumbing.'

  'Aye.' Mick grinned as he pulled out his gun. 'Though there are advantages in being somewhere less civilised.' He checked it was fully loaded and thrust it back into his waistband.

  'You're just as dead from a crossbow bolt,' said Aidan.

  'Aye. But crossbow bolts only come your way one at a time.'

  'Not if you're facing an army.'

  Godfrey reached out and smacked Aidan on the shoulder. 'Right little ray of sunshine, you are.'

  'What d'you expect?'

  'Are we ready, then?' cut in Mick, before a full-scale argument could develop.

  Aidan put down his empty bowl. 'Aye, boss.'

  'I reckon we are,' added Godfrey.

  'Right, then. Let's to work.'

  They took only what they strictly needed and could easily carry, leaving all their other possessions in the shed. If they succeeded, they wouldn't be coming back. If they failed, they wouldn't be going anywhere except three shallow holes in the ground.

  Godfrey was right, Mick thought as they moved through the streets. This was a primitive country, a primitive city, all stone walls and unpaved streets. Whatever had motivated him to come here? Because your last employer was trying to kill you, he reminded himself. It seemed like he brought out the worst in his employers.

  Enough. A casual observer might not notice, but the whole city was nervy as a mouse who sniffed a cat. Mick made one sharp gesture and his men pulled away from him. Now all three of them were heading in different directions, three men with hard expressions. Three men who loo
ked like they knew what was going on. Three men who would stop and talk to people, to stall holders, to street sellers, to idlers. To the people who would pass on every interesting snippet of information they heard. Rumours, gossip - outright sedition.

  And the people were ready to hear it. They had been ready for weeks, hungry for an excuse, and for three weeks Mick had fed that hunger. Now he laid a feast, among the perfumed skirts of the prostitutes and the green smell of the vegetable market.

  New taxes coming, to pay for war.

  Conscription coming. Every man between sixteen and thirty.

  Curfew planned. New laws. Dissent punishable by death.

  Even at noon, the sun was no more than three-quarters of the way up the sky, and a chill breeze funnelled through every narrow alley. Still, it was midday as midday ever was in this part of the world, and that was the signal to stop talking. They met in Palace Square.

  'Nice and quiet,' observed Godfrey, looking round.

  'Worryingly quiet, you might say,' added Aidan with a smirk.

  Mick grinned back and tugged on his earring. 'You might also say it all depends on your point of view. And I wouldn't want to have the point of view of the captain of the guard right now.' He remembered nights drinking with Big Brendan, and he remembered the large man's feet kicking desperately at thin air as the hangman's noose grabbed at his neck. He remembered the cold silence of the crowd, and the clenched fists of Cal, Brendan's brother, standing beside him. Three men had called themselves captain of the guard since then, each lasting a shorter time than the last before simply vanishing in the night – or the day. The