The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle)

by Miles Cameron

  “Who’ll do the laundry?” Blanche asked. “The Queen is that particular.”

  They both laughed.

  “Becca?” Blanche asked very quietly, as if afraid to be caught out.

  “Yes, my dear Blanche,” Lady Almspend replied a little too brightly.

  “Do you know the Red Knight?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” Almspend replied. They could both hear hooves in the flagged courtyard, and night was falling and the babe was blessedly asleep. “But Ranald loves him. He knighted Ranald and sent him back to me. I don’t need to know much more.” As she spoke, she bustled about the Queen’s chamber, laying a few of the Queen’s surviving possessions in their accustomed places. Ranald had rescued what he could from her rooms in the palace.

  Blanche realized that she was blushing.

  Lady Almspend was too well-bred to notice.

  And then the Queen swept in, tired, nay, exhausted, and yet in tearing spirits, with another victory behind her.

  “That Red Knight is the very paragon of chivalry,” she said. “So—odd, considering. I knew he could beat de Vrailly. God willed it.” Desiderata paused. There was her old familiar hairbrush, and there was Rebecca Almspend to wield it.

  She looked at her friend, and suddenly, without volition, tears filled her eyes and she sat rather suddenly. “Oh, Becca,” she said.

  Rebecca shot a glance at Blanche and went and cradled her friend’s head on her chest. “Your grace—”

  “They killed Diota,” the Queen said suddenly. “They killed her. They killed all my friends but you and Mary—all the knights. Oh, Mary, Mother of God.” She choked, almost gagged on her tears, and then wept.

  They were her first tears in many days.

  Becca held her head and rocked her.

  Her eyes met Blanche’s. Blanche was frozen, but Becca blinked, and Blanche understood. She came and took one of the Queen’s hands, very hesitantly, and squeezed it.

  “We’re here, your grace,” she said.

  “I hate the dark,” Desiderata cried. She clung to Blanche as if Blanche was a floating plank and she was drowning.

  “Shush, your grace. It’s all over now,” Almspend said as if she were holding a baby.

  The Queen raised her face, and it was ugly with tears, the muscles of it moving as if her face were full of worms, and she gave voice to a wordless cry of anguish.

  “Annnnghhh,” she cried. “I loved him, even if he—Even when he—Sweet Christ, they are all dead. All my friends, and my love. Dead, dead, dead. They cut her head from her body and put it on a spike—I saw it.”

  Blanche was chilled—horrified.

  Lady Almspend merely held her friend. Blanche slipped out and went to the prince, her brother, who came immediately, dropping his cervelleur into the hands of a squire without a word.

  He nodded to Blanche. “You are the Queen’s tire-woman? Your hair is like the silk of the east and your eyes are like the sky of early evening.” He smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “I have waited days to say that.” He was still in his arming clothes, sweat-soaked and smelling strongly of man and horse.

  Blanche had met Occitans before, and she moved briskly along the corridor.

  “I know my suit is hopeless, fair maiden, but give me a lock of your hair and I’ll—”

  “Your sister the Queen is in a bad way, your grace,” Blanche said stiffly.

  He bowed to her—still moving. He was as graceful as an irk, and there were those that said that there was irkish blood in the south. “I stink—I know it. But I promise you, I am a prince, and well able to—”

  Blanche blushed. “Your grace,” she barked. She bowled him through the door into Desiderata’s outer chamber.

  He looked back. “I am a fool, of course. You do not want reward for your love, but only—”

  Then he saw his sister. To his credit, his face transformed, and from a comic lover he was instantly a caring brother. “Oh, sweet Mother of God,” he said.

  Desiderata fell into his arms, and Rebecca backed away.

  Rebecca took in the extreme discomfort writ large on Blanche’s face and nodded, even as Desiderata calmed.

  “Her grace’s breviary is still, I fear, in her captain’s pavilion,” she said. “Blanche, would you be kind enough to fetch it?”

  Blanche curtsied, even as the Queen protested.

  “Let her rest, Becca. She has gone through everything I’ve been through but the birth.” The Queen’s sobs were slowing, and with much the same transformation as her brother had shown, the Queen’s face seemed to change. Lines smoothed, tendons were erased, and her breathing slowed.

  Her brother held her by both hands. In Occitan, he said, “I haven’t seen you cry like that since you broke your arm as a girl.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where it came from,” she said, her voice lower and easier.

  Blanche sighed, accepted Lady Almspend’s smile and nod, and fled before the prince’s eye fell on her again.

  She was vexed, and fatigue made her vexation feel like something more serious. The pain was like a splinter in her finger—the more she worried it, the more painful it was.

  The prince fancied her and offered her reward. It was plain enough—that’s what men of his class did to offset things like pregnancy and shame. They offered lower-class women money.

  But the night before, she’d—this was the splinter in her soul—imagined rewards herself. What did that make her?

  Sweet Christ, what did Sukey think? She stopped in the darkness, halfway across the smooth field of grass that grew for a long crossbow shot outside the city walls and on which the company was camped—camped, if few fires and no tents make a camp. The captain’s pavilion—travel stained and with a slightly sagging ridgepole between its two high points—was the only tent in the camp.

  Sukey was gone, of course.

  Suddenly Blanche had no interest in going to that pavilion, where he sat. She could see the candle-lit space within—there was Toby, his squire, fussing, and there was Nell. And, her mother’s voice said, what would they think?

  Men had fancied Blanche since her breasts began to bud. She’d always enjoyed it and never let it drive her, like some girls, whose heads were turned forever—not by love, but by the power. But in this case, she bit her lip in annoyance, turning on her heel.

  She was close by the pavilion by then, and she missed a tent-rope in the dark. It tripped her, and she squealed.

  In a moment, there was a hard arm across her throat.

  A tall, thin man glared at her. His eyes were unfriendly, and his face was like a ferret’s. She remembered him from the birthing.

  “What you got there, mate?” barked a voice near at hand.

  The thin man gave her a hand up. “Never mind, Cully,” he said. “It’s just the captain’s piece.”

  Blanche flushed. Her ankle hurt, and so did her pride. She sputtered.

  Cat—that was his name—was not unkind. “No need to sneak, Miss. We all know ya now.”

  Unbidden, the language of her childhood hissed out. “Sod off, Beanpole! I’m not your captain’s doxy or any man’s.”

  Cat laughed. Cully grinned. “Oh, aye. Our mistake,” Cully said. Then, seriously, “He’s not—his self. He’s…” Cully shook his head and his helmet glinted in the darkness and she realized they must be guards.

  “Who’s there?” called Toby.

  Blanche writhed.

  “The Queen’s lady,” Cully said.

  The captain—visible as a shape, a very Red-Knight-like shape, right to his profile, on the lantern show of the tent wall—sprang to his feet. In another mood she might have been pleased by his alacrity.

  Cully guided her firmly around the tent-stakes as if she were a wayward infant, which made her mad.

  “Lady Blanche,” the Red Knight said.

  “I’m no lady, and I’ve a-told you so before, my lord. My lady, her grace, has sent me to ask for her breviary, which she left in your tent.�
� She gave a stiff-backed curtsey. “And I’d appreciate it if any other little thing her grace left might be returned, so that I don’t have to make another trip.”

  She could see she’d wounded him. In another mood, she might have relented.

  “Toby, I’d like to speak to Blanche, if I might, and then perhaps—”

  “No, my lord, I will not be alone with any man, thank you,” Blanche said. She spat it more than said it.

  His back went up, she saw it, and liked him better for it, right through her anger.

  With a coldness she admired he looked down his nose at her. “Very well. Fetch the Queen’s things, Toby, I’m going out to have a look at our posts.”

  “Oh, Christ Jesus,” muttered Cully. “Lady…”

  He made a sign to Cat, hidden by the tent flap, and the younger archer ran off into the darkness just before the captain stalked out of the tent and vanished into the darkness.

  Nell looked at her accusingly. “What was that for?” she asked.

  Toby didn’t meet her eye, but his disapproval was obvious. He had the Queen’s prayerbook, as well as a small reliquary that Ser Ranald had rescued and a ring, and he put them all in a soft bag and handed it to her.

  “Look for yourself,” he said, in almost exactly his master’s tone. “We wouldn’t want you to have to come again.”

  Blanche sniffed. It was a sniff of dismissal, contempt, the most formidable of all the weapons her mother had given her, and she had used it to put apprentices and laundry maids in their places on many occasions. She took the bag and did indeed walk around the pavilion, giving everything a careful look.

  She knew the great tent well from a day spent with the Queen; the inner hangings, the small chest of bound books, the absence of any kind of religious equipment. On the back was a small tapestry of a knight and a unicorn.

  She loved the tapestry.

  But she was too angry—and hurt—to enjoy it. So she turned, delivered another sniff, and started out.

  “I’ll take you back to the bishop’s palace,” said Nell. “I wouldn’t want anyone to do you an injury.”

  “I can find my own way,” Blanche shot back.

  “Can you?” Nell asked. “Military camps can be dangerous for unarmed women. You don’t want Cat Evil finding you alone. Or any of the others. They’re only tame to some fists, like falcons. They ain’t tame.”

  Blanche, who’d survived months of the Galles at court, snorted. “And you’ll protect me?” she asked. Nell was tall and big-boned, but she was fifteen years old to Blanche’s twenty, and Blanche suspected she could drop the younger woman with a single blow. Laundry gave a girl muscles.

  They were out in the darkness. “What’s eating you?” Nell asked. “Why’d you go and spit at the cap’n? He likes you.”

  “He wants me,” Blanche said sullenly. “That doesn’t mean he likes me.”

  “Is that the rub? Toby says the two of you…” Nell made a hand motion that was, blessedly, hidden in the darkness.

  “Toby doesn’t know shit,” Blanche spat.

  “Now you don’t sound like a lady,” Nell allowed, so very reasonably that suddenly Blanche stopped, crouched—and burst into tears.

  She found herself crying on Nell’s shoulder. Like the Queen, she shook it off. “You should give me your coat,” Blanche said. She pushed a smile. “It stinks.”

  Nell nodded. “I’d be happy—” she said. “I thought we was friends. But then you were—”

  Blanche put up a hand. “I’m tired and—” She shook her head. “Damn it,” she said. She knew the fatigue and the worry had sapped her. Last night’s lack of sleep was no help. “I’m not a whore,” she said.

  Nell laughed. “No one said you was!” she allowed.

  “Cully thought so, and Cat,” Blanche said. They were walking more quickly.

  “Aye, well, Cat pretty much hates women and Cully doesn’t think there’s another kind.” Nell shrugged. “I never get close to Cat.” She looked out into the darkness. The gate was close.

  “But the cap’n likes you,” she went on. “And people are going to catch holy hell ’cause you spat on him. He’s out there right now, looking at sentries. Hear it? He’s caught someone asleep. Pay lost, and maybe a beating.”

  “Very nice,” Blanche said stiffly. “Not my fault.”

  Nell’s face, by the light of the torches burning at the city gate, showed a worldly cynicism that belied her years. “No?” she asked. “If’n you say.”

  “You love him yourself—you lie with him if it’s so important to everyone.” Blanche regretted the words as soon as she said them.

  Nell frowned. “No,” she said, as if considering the proposition. “No, that wouldn’t work. Bad for discipline, I expect.” She shook her head. “You need sleep,” she said, as if she were the older one. She gave Blanche a brief hug.

  Blanche didn’t resist.

  Released, she fled in past the town guards. She thought that if she met Prince Tancredo in the corridors she’d kill him, but everyone was asleep but a handful of servants. She put the Queen’s treasures in her outer room, found that Lady Almspend had rather thoughtfully made her up a pallet with a sheet and blanket next to her own, and lay down on it.

  She wanted to go to sleep. Instead she lay thinking about what a fool she was for a long time.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Company

  Dawn found a surly company, sour from too much wine and too much marching. The horses were tired, and the oats were not enough to raise their spirits. Pages stumbled, half asleep, along the lines.

  To add insult to injury, a light rain began to fall on men who’d slept with no tents and a single blanket.

  Dropsy, one of the archers, was chained to the captain’s wagon, the only wagon left in the camp. Before they marched, the captain sat in judgment on him, and invoked the lesser penalty for sleeping on duty; not death and not a flogging. Instead, when all the men were formed, Cully stripped Dropsy to the skin and made him run down the ranks, and all the archers took a slap at him with their bows, or with arrows or leather belts or whatever they fancied. Running the gauntlet was a punishment as old as armies, and Nell, who hadn’t seen it done before, might have expected that the archers would go easy on one of their own.

  She might have expected it, but she didn’t. The average archer’s capacity for cruel humour exceeded his kindness on the best of days—nice men stayed home and farmed. Nor was Oak Pew any different—her heavily studded belt slapped into Dropsy’s buttocks with a sound that made men wince and miss their blows.

  Dropsy wailed at the pain and wept for it, but he didn’t fall down and he didn’t protest, and he was fast enough, when awake. He made it to the end more injured in pride than body. Cully was waiting with his filthy hose and his braes and shoes and a surgeon’s mate, who put a salve in the deeper welts.

  The captain watched it all like an angry hawk watches rabbits.

  “Mount,” he said to his trumpeter.

  The men and women of the company were in a better mood for having punished Dropsy, and while the man still sobbed, which was disconcerting in a grown man and a killer, the rest ignored him, made dark jokes about his name and habits, and got their horses.

  Mounted, they formed quickly, aware of the captain’s mood. The Occitans were slower off the mark, and the captain sent Ser Michael to move them.

  Then he rode over in front of the company.

  “We’re going into the worst place we’ve ever been,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to march two hundred leagues and then fight once. But my friends, the fun is over. I was gentle with Dropsy. In a day, a man asleep could be our deaths and the failure of our cause.” He looked them over. “The sorcerer has taken Ticondaga. To the best of our knowledge, he’s going for the Inn of Dorling—and after that, Albinkirk.” He sat back. “We will endeavour to stop him. But for the next few days, we will move very fast through country that may already be hostile. The next man or woman asleep
on duty will be flogged—even if it is a knight.”

  Silence.

  “Good. Company will wheel to the right by subsections forming a column of fours. March.” The company’s many subsections made quarter wheels, so that the whole manoeuvred like Moreans from being a long line three horsemen deep to a column four wide facing off to the right, down the road.

  “Halt,” he called, and each section alligned itself.

  He raised his hammer over his head and winced. Most of his body hurt this morning. He shook his head and lowered the hammer.

  The captain rode to the head of his column, where Toby and Nell and the rest of the casa waited. To the east, the sun crested the mountains of Morea. Ser Michael cantered up.

  “The prince hasn’t even awakened yet,” he said.

  The captain nodded. “Then we leave him behind.”

  Ser Michael nodded. “That’ll go over well,” he said.

  The captain frowned and raised his hammer again. “March!” he roared.

  Chapter Thirteen

  De La Marche died in the storming of Ticondaga. He didn’t die on the battlements, cutting his way in. He died in the sack, when children were being destroyed and eaten, when men who’d begged for quarter were fed to monsters by cheering sailors, when a hundred atrocities passed in a few beats of a terrified victim’s heart.

  De La Marche stood in the yard running slick with fresh blood and tried to stop it, and a stone troll made a pulp of his head. Boglins ate part of him as he lay there and, later, something with too many legs ripped one of his arms off his corpse and took it away into the darkness.

  Thorn stood like a great stone tree in the courtyard, watching. He did not move much—a waste of energy. He merely observed. The storming and consequent workings had robbed him of a great deal of his power, at least temporarily, and he had not had the replenishment from Ghause that he had anticipated.