KNIGHTS OF MACRAGGE

by Nick Kyme

  Daceus took a step forwards but the young squire held out a gloved hand.

  ‘J-just him.’ He pointed a shaking finger at Sicarius.

  Daceus bristled. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Vandius took one hand off the pommel of his sword. Even Iulus began to rise from his bench until Scipio laid a hand upon his shoulder.

  ‘Ambassadors, remember…’ he said in a low voice.

  Sicarius stood his Lions down. ‘It’s alright,’ he said, looking the squire in the eye, though the man could barely meet his gaze. ‘I am sure the baron means me no harm. Is that not right?’

  The squire nodded vigorously. His face had begun to bead with sweat. ‘The rest have to stay here,’ he said, regaining some of his dwindling courage. ‘Baron’s order.’

  Sicarius shared a look with Vedaeh, who had stood up from her place by the fire. She nodded, pale but visibly relieved.

  ‘They will remain,’ said Sicarius. He turned back to the squire. ‘I assume you are to escort me?’

  ‘Yes, milord.’

  ‘Then to your duty.’

  ‘Now we’ll see,’ Scipio said to Iulus, as Sicarius was about to leave.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘How well we can play the role.’

  Sicarius would never be afforded the chance, as a long horn blast rang out before he had set one foot outside of the feast hall.

  ‘What is that?’ Sicarius asked.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said the squire, drawing his sword, suddenly more fearful of whatever was happening outside the hall than who was inside it. ‘You must stay here while I find out what’s going on,’ he said, brandishing the blade at Sicarius.

  Vandius looked poised to despatch the squire there and then.

  ‘Are you going to use that, boy?’ growled Daceus, fists clenched. He took a half-step closer.

  Again, Sicarius stood the Lions down. ‘He has no need to, Retius. For we will do as he asks.’

  The horns skirled out again, a long, discordant note. Then another.

  The squire backed out, the door shutting behind him, the locks and bars sliding into place.

  ‘That’s a call to arms,’ said Vandius, as soon as the squire was gone, whipping his sword into an upright position.

  ‘He’s right,’ Daceus agreed, gladius drawn.

  Scipio got to his feet a few seconds before Iulus, and the five Adeptus Astartes converged around Sicarius.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Vedaeh, joining them. Reda had fallen asleep on Gerrant’s shoulder, but stirred with the sudden commotion, wide-eyed and alert.

  ‘A fight, most likely,’ said Sicarius.

  ‘Between whom?’

  ‘Farrodum and one of its enemies,’ he replied. ‘The bone-swine we heard talk of.’

  ‘Are we fighting too?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘If whatever it is steps beyond this threshold.’

  Iulus came forward. ‘We cannot leave these people to die, captain.’

  Vedaeh stepped in. ‘You cannot defy the rule of law here.’

  ‘I adhere to Imperial law and am sworn to defend mankind,’ replied Iulus, turning on the chronicler.

  ‘Please. If you leave now and draw swords, you might end up making it worse. You must wait.’ She looked to Sicarius for support.

  ‘I don’t like this, Vedaeh,’ he said.

  ‘But you do agree with me, don’t you?’

  Scipio could see that Sicarius did, but felt the same frustration they all must be experiencing. ‘What about Pillium?’ he asked. ‘He’s alone and possibly still unconscious. We can’t just leave him to fend for himself.’

  ‘I don’t disagree, but we have no idea where he was taken,’ Daceus cut in. ‘And even if we did…’ He looked at Vedaeh, ever the counsellor for non-violence. ‘None of us can step beyond these gates unseen.’

  Sicarius scowled. ‘We cannot leave him unprotected. I’m sorry, Vedaeh.’

  Vedaeh was about to protest when Reda spoke up.

  ‘Then let us do it.’ She was standing by the fire, her arms by her side. ‘Vanko and I,’ she said. The other armsman stood too, his gaze cold and determined. ‘We can slip through the streets unnoticed. It’s narrow, tight and with plenty of places to hide. No different to a starship, sire.’

  Sicarius took a moment to weigh up Reda’s proposal. Then he nodded to Vandius, who swept out his sword. One blow north to south, straight down the narrow slit between the two halves of the gate. As he stepped back, the dull thud of the wooden bar and the clang of the bolt could be heard as they struck the ground.

  The guards had already gone, the horn blasts summoning them to whatever crisis was unfolding across Farrodum.

  Vandius edged one half of the door open with the tip of his sword and Sicarius nodded to an aperture small enough for Reda and Gerrant to slip through.

  ‘Find him.’

  THE MEDICUS

  He scarcely fit upon the medical slab. Cwen had never seen a man so massive, and as she struggled with the thick clasps of his armour, she wondered if he were a man at all.

  ‘Help me with this,’ she said to the guard who had been posted to watch the injured stranger. The young warrior did not respond, but for a slight shake of the head.

  Cwen scowled. ‘Fine, I’ll do it myself.’

  Part of the breastplate had been badly damaged and was almost hanging off, the odd nails and bolts used to secure it torn away or loose. Cwen got her lithe fingers around one of the bolts but couldn’t turn it. She searched for and found a pair of iron tongs, like a blacksmith’s tool, and used them instead. With considerable effort she loosened the strange bolt and it came out, thudding heavily to the stone floor.

  The medicus swept her brow, sweating even in the winter chill of the infirmary, and threw a scathing look at the guard, who pretended not to notice. The room was small, and stacked with herbs and unguents, tonics and tinctures, all arrayed in deep wooden shelves off to one side of a medical bench. There were tools, knives and hooks and saws set up on a rack beneath a single small window that looked out onto a courtyard. The bench was made of stout wood and reinforced with metal braces, but it still bowed under the armoured weight of the stranger. He had been brought in without ceremony but with much commotion, no less than eight of the castellan’s men labouring to carry him across the threshold. It took another six to help heave him onto the bench and there he remained, unconscious but breathing.

  Cwen did not really know where to start. She thought it best to try to remove some of the armour but that was proving difficult, especially without help. She asked the guard again if he would assist her, and again the young warrior refused.

  ‘Coward…’ she hissed in the end, and hooked both hands around the exposed edge of the breastplate and tried to heave it off. She got it a few inches before the weight became too much and it slipped back. She leaned heavily on the stranger’s chest, twisting her torso as she searched for something on her tool rack. ‘Maybe I can find something to lever it off…’

  A hand like a vice snaked around her wrist and she cried out.

  The stranger’s eyes were open, but barely. A snarl was forming on his lips and he glared over at the guard, who had only managed to half-draw his sword before being frozen in place by the stranger’s hard eyes.

  ‘Where am I?’ he slurred, trying to get up but failing as the agony put him down again.

  Cwen held out her other hand, bidding the guard to sheathe his sword. Her eyes were full of fear. Not of the stranger, exactly, but at what he might do when the guard tried and failed to harm him.

  Paler than a winter storm, the guard took a step back and the sword slid into its scabbard under its own weight. He looked embarrassed at his state of disarray, trying to hide the wet patch staining his breeches, but dared moved no further.

  ‘Please…’ said Cwen, returning her attention to the stranger. She nodded to her wrist. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  The strange
r’s grip relaxed at once. His face was ashen and flecked with sweat. He had an odd smell, thick and cloying, a mixture of oil and overly sweet spice. The scent of warm iron radiated from under his armour, but she knew what this was.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Cwen told him. ‘I need to fix that.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, his eyes heavy-lidded and struggling to stay open. ‘Where are my brothers?’

  ‘I am Cwen, the medicus. I was asked to help you.’

  ‘My brothers…’ snapped the stranger, a sudden surge of anger forcing his shoulders up off the bench, but he quickly slumped down again.

  ‘I don’t know about them. I only know what I have to do for you. Please…’ said Cwen.

  The stranger let her go.

  The guard stepped forwards again, desperate to find his courage, and was about to say something when Cwen beat him to it.

  ‘Get out. Leave. Now.’

  ‘You heard her,’ rasped the stranger, attempting to rise again. The guard left at once, taking the smell of his urine with him. ‘Are you a healer then?’ the stranger asked.

  Cwen nodded.

  The stranger gave a curt laugh. ‘I doubt you’ll have tried to heal anyone like me before.’

  ‘Are you in much pain?’ Cwen asked, tentatively putting her hand on the stranger’s forehead. ‘You feel warm.’

  ‘My kind have a tendency to run hot. It’s my–’ he grimaced, biting back the agony, ‘my body’s response to injury. It’s working to heal me.’

  Cwen shrank back a little, but was more intrigued than afraid. ‘Incredible.’

  ‘To you, yes, I suppose it is.’ He leaned back and shut his eyes.

  ‘Do you have a name?’ asked Cwen, going to her medicine shelf to make up a tincture.

  ‘I am Brother Pillium, one of–’ he replied, stopping himself as he was about to say more.

  ‘You are with the knights, from the south.’

  The stranger raised a wry smile, and opened his eyes. ‘Aye, that’s us, from the south, from Macragge.’

  ‘Drink…’ invited Cwen, leaning over the stranger’s chest and gently raising a cup to his lips.

  The stranger frowned. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘A little turmeric, some henbane and hemlock.’

  The stranger laughed again. It looked painful to do so. ‘You’re wasting your time, medicus.’

  ‘Please,’ said Cwen, proffering the cup again.

  ‘As you wish.’ The stranger drank every drop. ‘There. Satisfied?’

  ‘Is your pain leavened?’

  ‘It is not,’ the stranger answered flatly, ‘but I have a piece of metal lodged in my side, deep enough that it’s beginning to irritate.’

  ‘Gods, where?’

  ‘Underneath my armour.’ He pointed.

  ‘How have you endured it for so long?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was there until a few moments ago. My body, it tends to… shut down pain, so I can fight.’

  ‘That sounds… awful,’ said Cwen.

  ‘It is my duty,’ the stranger replied. ‘My purpose.’

  ‘Then I pity you, my lord. It sounds like a bleak existence.’

  ‘It is necessary.’ He winced in pain again.

  ‘Your side?’ asked Cwen.

  The stranger nodded.

  ‘Let me help you remove the metal.’

  The stranger wrenched off his breastplate with one hand and it clattered noisily to the ground. A dark layer of mesh, like a finely woven smock that went beneath a suit of mail or a hauberk, shone beneath. Cwen had never seen the like and reached out with tentative fingers to touch it.

  ‘This material, what is it? Some kind of chainmail?’

  ‘Yes, chainmail. Finely wrought, by our master artisans.’

  ‘Truly the south is a land of wonders…’ Cwen breathed, running her hand along the tight-fitting mesh.

  There were two bore holes in the mesh, both in the upper chest, and Cwen recoiled as she saw them.

  ‘Are they wounds?’ she asked, leaning in to take a closer look.

  ‘Yes, wounds,’ said the stranger. She didn’t think he was telling her the entire truth but instead was tired of the conversation. ‘Here,’ he added, gesturing to his side.

  Cwen walked around to the other side of the bench and saw a sharp piece of ragged metal sticking out of the stranger’s flesh. It looked to be almost the length of a sword, only more jagged.

  ‘You’ll need to cut,’ he told her. ‘Into me. The shrapnel is barbed. If I just yank it out, it’ll tear me open.’

  ‘How are you even awake?’ Cwen whispered, but reached for her sharpest blade. It had a saw edge, and she hoped it would be strong enough to cut through the strange mesh.

  ‘I am from Macragge,’ said the stranger, as if that answered everything. ‘Now start cutting.’

  Blood was leaking freely from the wound, pooling redly at Cwen’s soft-shoed feet as she cut first into the mesh and then the skin. Both were tough, much tougher than she expected. The stranger bore it all, every one of her faltering, increasingly desperate attempts, not once crying out or expressing any discomfort beyond the occasional grunt.

  It took almost half an hour, and by the end of it, Cwen’s arms were trembling with exertion, but the mesh lay open like a partially peeled fruit and she had made a cut into the skin around the impalement in each of the four cardinal directions.

  ‘Good,’ rasped the stranger, ‘now, guide my hand.’

  Cwen did, taking his massive gauntleted fist in both hands and leading it until he had grasped the ragged metal.

  ‘Step back…’ advised the stranger.

  Cwen took three steps and he yanked out the metal, letting out a sharp cry of pain as he did so. It landed heavily, a twisted blade easily the length and thickness of a broadsword. Blood spilled eagerly from the wound, and Cwen rushed to gather up cloth and bandages to staunch the bleed, but by the time she had returned to the stranger’s side, the bleeding had almost stopped.

  ‘Impossible…’ she breathed.

  ‘Thank you, medicus. I owe you a debt,’ said the stranger, his voice thick with relief, and promptly passed out.

  Cwen looked on at his body in awe, almost statuesque in its perfection. A sculptor’s rendering in marble. To administer treatment to such a man… Cwen was glad he seemed so stout, but however enduring the stranger was, he could not reknit his own flesh. She would at least clean the wound and stitch it, she thought, and had taken up a bowl of clean water and a rag when the horns began to sound.

  She went to the window, setting down the bowl, and looked out across the courtyard and to the city beyond. Warning fires had been lit for every tower. Shadows moved against the flickering light, hunched and bestial, and inside the city walls.

  THE EYE DEMANDS

  Reda ran through the streets of Farrodum. She kept her hood up, her cloak held close to hide her obscure attire. No one was really looking, though; they were too preoccupied with fleeing or shouting, and the ramshackle buildings cast plenty of shadows. In spite of all that, she kept low and moved quickly but not hurriedly, Gerrant staying close and just behind her. She still had no idea what was happening, but the horns blared and now a bell was ringing too, from a watchtower to the north side of the city. Smeared orange light coloured the clouds overhead and she realised some kind of signal fire had been lit.

  A troop of footmen rushed past her and she ducked into the lee of an inn, though its lamps were doused and its shutters and door locked. It was the same across the entire street and the street beyond it: the people were barricading themselves inside as the soldiers ran to fend off whatever danger had infiltrated their walls.

  She saw pikemen, a lad with a crossbow struggling to feed a quarrel into its breech, the string too taut for him to pull back. Some carried lanterns, either the very young or the old, just as with the hunting party they had met in the wild lands outside of the city.

  ‘Inside! Inside!’ a town cryer was calling, a small brass bel
l tolling in his hand to punctuate each repeated instruction. ‘They are coming,’ he bellowed. ‘Inside!’

  Reda stayed out of the lantern light, away from the running men with swords and spears and other archaic weapons, and tried to find anything that might represent an apothecarion. She reasoned it must be close, else why take a burden as heavy as Pillium at the gate? She turned, about to ask Gerrant if he had seen anything useful, but the other armsman had gone.

  ‘Throne and shit, Vanko,’ she hissed, ‘where are you?’

  She doubled back, worrying that she had somehow lost him somewhere in the labyrinthine streets. He had been quiet ever since they had made planetfall, muttering now and then but verging on the incoherent. She had hoped it was just exhaustion, a symptom of how arduous the journey had been, but deep down she knew it was something else, something worse.

  The warp eye, she realised, though she prayed to the Emperor she was wrong. He looked. He bloody well looked. Just a glimpse.

  But a glimpse would be more than enough. She dared not think what horrors might have been unveiled to Vanko in that briefest of moments, or what they might have done to him, might still be doing to him.

  ‘Vanko!’ Reda called out, a half-rasp, half-shout. This was dangerous, and could invite unwanted attention, but she had to find him. Vedaeh’s words came back to her in that moment, and she cursed the old chronicler for ever saying them and herself for recalling them at arguably the shittiest time possible.

  They would fear them. They would kill us.

  She thought she caught sight of Vanko’s cloak disappearing around a corner and gave chase.

  ‘Get back here, corporal,’ she hissed between clenched teeth, ‘that’s a damn order.’

  Barrelling around the corner brought Reda face-to-face with a group of spearmen who were coming in the opposite direction.

  ‘Hold!’ said one, raising up a lantern and squinting at Reda through fear-edged eyes. They all looked afraid, all five of them. The leader had a sword and drew it as soon as he saw who Reda was.