The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  There was Bad Tom, who had no notion of kneeling to any man, and there was Nell, whose eyes had filled with tears, and there was Ser Michael, who wore a grin as wide as a cheese, and Ser Gavin, who looked as if he’d been kicked, and there were two boys who watched the barn and Ser Bertran, silent as usual, and Ser Danved, silent for once, and Cully and Ricard Lantorn and Cat Evil—all on their knees, and Francis Atcourt and Chris Foliak and Lord Corcy and the sheriff and Toby and Jean and a dozen others in the candle-lit dark, all on their knees on the dirty stone flags.

  “God save the King,” they said.

  Then Amicia began to sing. She raised her voice in her Order’s Te Deum, softly at first. But Ricar Orcsbane knew it, and Lord Corcy, and Gabriel—they sang, and other voices took up the hymn until the barn was full of the sound.

  And Gavin went to his brother.

  “What?” he asked, before the amen had sounded. “What has happened?”

  Gabriel held himself together long enough to stumble out into the night, his brother at his heels. He found a milking shed, turned, and took Gavin by the shoulders.

  “What?” Gavin said. “You look like you lost your best friend.” He paused. “We won, didn’t we? We saved the baby.” He looked at Gabriel’s rare, open tears. “Christ, you’re scaring me. Why do I feel this way?” he demanded.

  Gabriel simply collapsed like a marionette with cut strings, and began to shiver; he said, “Nooooooo,” for a while, and sobbed.

  To Gavin, it was more terrifying than fighting a hasternoch or a wyvern. He was tempted to walk away into the comforting darkness, and he told himself that his brother would rather be alone.

  But he also told himself that he had a lot of atoning left to do for being the cruel brother, and so finally he pushed himself into his brother’s personal space with the same kind of effort that he’d have used to close for a grapple in a fight to the death. It was—embarrassing.

  Gabriel threw his arms around his brother. “They are all dead,” he said clearly. And then he let go of any attempt at self-control.

  Eventually, embarrassed and more than a little angry, Gabriel pulled himself out of his brother’s arms. “I hate that,” he sputtered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “What, being human?” Gavin nodded. “Who’s all dead?”

  “Mater. Pater. Ticondaga. They’re all dead.” He lost it again, moaning.

  He wept.

  Gavin, puzzled, looked at him. “I’m sorry even to ask this—but are you sure?”

  “Unngh—I’m—sure.” He paused. “Ohhh. Ohh, God.” He had trouble speaking, and his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed.

  Gavin fidgeted. He couldn’t take this seriously. His mother was literally a force of nature—not something that could even become dead.

  “I killed them,” Gabriel said. “Fuck. Fuck. I… got it so wrong.”

  Gavin began to fear that his brother couldn’t be lying. But he walled off the horror—father and mother and brothers all dead. He simply willed it away. “How in God’s name can you have killed them?” he asked.

  Gabriel’s tear-filled eyes glittered like something malevolent in the dark. They had a faint red sheen to them. “I was deceived. Thorn is stronger—aagh. Stronger than Mater thought, and stronger than I thought.” He paused, caught his breath—lost it again, and sobbed anew.

  Gavin cleared his throat. “And that’s your fault?” he asked. “Isn’t that a little selfish, even for you, brother?”

  Gabriel raised his head. He didn’t chuckle, or smile, but something in his eyes said that Gavin’s shot had gone home.

  “How can you know they’re lost?” Gavin said reasonably.

  Gabriel coughed and cleared his throat and rubbed his nose on the wool sleeve of his pourpoint. He cleared his throat again. “Like it or not, I’ve always been able to tell where Mater was—to some degree. Unless she hid herself.” He choked a moment on some memory, and then sat suddenly on a bench. A milking bench.

  “Oh, fuck, I have screwed this up,” he said, and put his head in his hands.

  The reality of the death of his mother and father was just starting to strike Gavin. He cared for his brother, and he’d been more interested in supporting him—he, who seldom if ever needed support. But things began to seep in around the edges…

  “Pater, too?” he asked.

  Gabriel raised his head. His eyes were oddly swollen, and Gavin had a flash of the last time he’d seen Gabriel like this—when he and Aneas and Agrain had ambushed Gabriel and beaten him to a pulp. A long time ago.

  Then, he’d spat defiance through his tears.

  Now, he shook his head. “I don’t know.” He met Gavin’s eyes. “Damn it, Gavin, you have no sight in the aethereal. You have no idea. It’s like a dream. Nothing is clear unless you make it clear, and if you exert your will to make it clear, you may be changing it.”

  He paused. “Oh, merde.” He was recovering—Gavin could see the wheels turning. He was just comprehending, himself. He loved his father—a tough, crafty man who—

  As if he’d been punched, Gavin went down on one knee.

  Gabriel put his arms around his brother. “Turn about is fair play,” he said into his brother’s hair. But then he was crying again.

  “Damn you,” he muttered, struggling visibly for his self-control. But he failed.

  Then they both cried together.

  For no apparent reason, Nell found herself being a woman, not a military page. Well—there was a reason—there was a baby.

  He had healthy lungs and a determined air of survival, and wanted everyone to know it. Big, tough men quailed at his cries.

  Small, tough women did not. So Nell joined Petite Mouline, Ser Bertran’s page, and a handful of other women tending the baby, while some of the company’s best, and hardest-working men—Toby, for example, and Robin—cowered in corners and made extravagant excuses and furiously polished armour. Bad Tom busied himself setting a watch.

  Blanche led the women. She clearly knew more about babies than the others, and they had no matrons or mothers to guide them.

  Blanche had something of the captain’s gift. As the hours wore on, Nell began to suspect that Blanche knew little more about babies than she did herself, but she had solid notions of cleanliness and a determined, confident air.

  When the bells of the parish church rang twelve, the baby went to sleep like the extinguishing of a candle.

  Throughout the barn, men muttered, sighed, and fell instantly asleep themselves.

  Just after the bell rang for one o’clock, Blanche finished tidying up the birthing room and smiled gratefully at Nell, who had stayed with her when all the others had gone to sleep. The nun—everyone said she was a nun, despite her clothes—sat by the Queen, but she did not speak or move—she was eerily like a statue of the Virgin, and Blanche knew, in some instinctive way, that she was guarding the Queen, or the baby, or both.

  She was, however, useless for the normal work, and there was an unholy amount of blood, mucus, and a thick black sludge emitted by the baby that was more disgusting than anything she’d faced in five solid years as a palace laundress.

  Blanche piled all the foul linen in one horrible pack, and wrapped it in burlap, and was saddened to note the state of her own kirtle—a grey, shapeless beggar’s garment to start with, it was now quite foul. Blanche, who always prided herself on her clean, neat prettiness, was a little surprised at her own state.

  Nell, who seemed a sensible, smart lass even if she did dress like a man, was now falling asleep every time she stopped moving.

  “Go sleep,” Blanche said in her laundry command voice. “You’ve been a hero.”

  Nell grinned. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “I did some fighting today.”

  Blanche hadn’t noticed that the other girl was wounded, but she had a nasty gash on her left forearm and another, already closed but black as pitch, on her ankle.

  “The other bastard’s hilt,” Nell said.

&
nbsp; Blanche sighed and tore the cleanest strip from her shift—one of her own shifts worn under the beggar’s kirtle. She regretted it, but Nell was the closest thing she had to a friend in the lunatic asylum into which she felt she’d fallen. And Nell—another competent, hard-working girl—had the big cauldron boiling, having fed it a succession of small branches brought by guilty-looking young men. Including one tall fellow who kept smiling at Nell even through the chaos of the evening.

  Blanche scooped some boiling water and made a quick, hot poultice as her mother had taught her and started to clean the wound. “Saints, sweetie, that’s open. It’ll go red and sick.” Blanche took a deep breath to steady herself. “I should stitch it closed,” she said.

  Nell looked at her. “You know how?” she asked.

  Blanche frowned. “I’ve seen it done,” she said. “And I’m a fine sewer by trade—none better.”

  “Boil the thread and fire the needle,” Nell said. “I seen that part in Morea.”

  Three minutes later, it was done. Nell looked at the neat, even stitches with something like reverence.

  Blanche also looked pleased. “Never sewn flesh afore,” she said. “Yech. What a day. That boy—your husband?” she asked.

  Nell laughed. “Lover,” she said. “I want to be a knight, like Sauce, not a baby maker.”

  Blanche gave a little cough. Her shock must have shown. Nell shrugged. “In the company, you do what you like as long as you don’t make waves. I never been treated like I am here. Almost like I was a man.”

  Blanche grinned. “I don’t want to be treated like a man,” she said, and giggled despite her fatigue.

  Nell managed a giggle, too. “Not like that, silly,” she said. Then shrugged, no doubt thinking of Oak Pew. “Unless that’s what suits you. All the captain cares about is work and fighting. There really ain’t no other rules.”

  “Aren’t any other rules,” Blanche said. She smiled in apology. “Sorry, my ma was a daemon for words. Don’t you have any women—no offence—in this company?”

  Nell shrugged. “There’s some. You meet Sukey?”

  Blanche nodded. “Dark hair—brought all the sheets.”

  “She couldn’t stay because she’s in charge of everyone’s billets. Like an officer. Her mother’s the head woman of the whole company. Course, her mother’s a sorceress, too. And a seamstress.” Nell sat back. “Mag does near everything. She knows all the songs, too.” She looked down at her arm, which Blanche was patting with a hot, wet rag.

  Blanche took a strip of clean, dry linen, looked at it critically, and put it down to wash her hands.

  “You have a boy?” Nell asked.

  “No,” Blanche admitted.

  “No boy?” Nell asked. It seemed terrible to her.

  Blanche smiled. “I’m no better than I ought to be, as my mother would say with a sniff. I’ve had a few boys. But at the palace, it makes trouble if you do aught more than flirt with staff, and out in the streets—” She pursed her lips. “There’s a host of apprentices would like to have me. But I’m not ready to be caught.” She laughed.

  She wrapped Nell’s arm quickly, and a little too tight.

  “Where are you going to sleep?” Nell asked.

  “Right here, on the floor,” Blanche said. She began putting the filthy linen into the nice clean boiling water, as if she was the lowest laundry girl back at the palace.

  Nell shook her head. “We have straw pallets and blankets and all proper—”

  Blanche laughed at the idea that a straw pallet and a blanket was proper.

  “Come sleep wi’ my lance. I’ll see you right. In the morning, Sukey will assign you somewhere.”

  Blanche nodded. “I’m the Queen’s laundress,” she said. “I don’t really need to be assigned.”

  Nell looked as if she might say more, but Diccon chose that moment to poke his head in.

  Blanche was appalled at how casually these people dealt with the Queen. But she saw her new friend’s face light up.

  “Run along and have a chat wi’ your lad,” she said in her best grown-up voice. “I’ll finish this little pile of things and hang ’em. But come back and show me where to sleep, eh, my sweet?”

  Nell nodded and gripped her hand like a man. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Diccon’s never long,” she said with a sly smile.

  Diccon’s head vanished.

  “You know how babies is made?” Blanche asked.

  “Oh, aye. I even practise, from time to time. You?” Nell shot back.

  Both girls laughed, and then Nell went off into the dark stone barn, and Blanche kept boiling her linens, though her eyes would scarcely stay open.

  She did a haphazard job, by her own standards. Really, what she needed was more clean water, and she was, just for a moment, too tired to fetch it and a little defeated by not knowing where it had come from.

  The inner door opened, and she turned, hoping for Nell.

  Instead, it was the dark-haired lord. The Red Knight, except he’d worn green all day.

  She was seated, and tired, but she managed to get to her feet.

  He waved a hand and looked at the Queen and the babe asleep on her breast. The Queen’s eyes were open—Blanche had a moment of unease at what she might have heard, but she smiled.

  “I’m alive,” she said, in her normal voice. “Is that Blanche?”

  Blanche curtsied.

  “What are you doing here, Blanche?” she asked. “Never mind, my dear. May I have a cup of water?”

  “Oh, your grace, I’m out of water,” Blanche said. Both of them were whispering. The baby stayed asleep.

  “I’ll fetch water,” the Red Knight said. He looked odd. Like he’d been crying. Blanche thought he was the handsomest man, but his eyes were red and puffy like a little boy caught stealing a cake.

  “Just show me,” Blanche said.

  “I can fetch water,” he insisted. He took the big bucket from where it sat by the fire. In the flickering light, it was easy to misjudge distance, and he bumped into her hard.

  “A thousand apologies, Mistress,” he said.

  He went out.

  Blanche was considering following him, but then the Queen would be alone, except for Sister Amicia who was, somehow, not quite human. Not directly with them. Blanche lacked a vocabulary to describe her, but she shone softly golden in the darkness.

  The Queen called out. “I’m sorry to be so helpless, Blanche, but I am so hungry…”

  Blanche had no idea where to get food, and she didn’t want to interrupt Nell.

  The Red Knight came back and managed to set the full bucket down by the fire without spilling a drop.

  “My lord, can you—fetch some food for her grace?” Blanche hesitated. It was always dangerous, giving any kind of a demand to a lord. “I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s for the Queen.”

  “Ser Gabriel will do,” he said. “We did share a saddle all day. Your grace,” he said, bowing in the Queen’s direction, “what do you fancy that I can find for you? I wouldn’t wake my worst enemy right now for service.”

  The Queen stretched out a hand and took his. “You saved us,” she said.

  Ser Gabriel knelt.

  “Ghause…” the Queen said.

  Gabriel cleared his throat. Blanche thought he might have sobbed. “She tried to kill you and the babe,” he said.

  “And now?” the Queen asked.

  “I fear she is dead—though not through our efforts.” Gabriel’s smile was shaky in the firelight, and Blanche turned away, unwilling to watch. “I hope it is not treason to want my mother not on my conscience.”

  “Your mother is dead?” the Queen asked. “Oh, ser knight, I’m so sorry.”

  “If you are so sorry immediately after she tried to kill you and your baby,” he said savagely, “then you are a saint.”

  Desiderata smiled. “A hungry saint,” she said with a glance at Sister Amicia. “She is watching in the aethereal.”

  Ser Gabriel put a hand on h
er forehead with great tenderness. “In the Wild—when a Power reaches a certain—level—”

  Desiderata nodded. “I know. Apotheosis.”

  Gabriel looked at Amicia. “I think she’s close.” He shrugged, trying to make light of it. “What happens to Christians? Sainthood?”

  Desiderata smiled. “She will not leave us just yet, ser knight,” she said with serene confidence, as if…

  … as if someone else were speaking through her. Blanche shivered. She knew the Queen intimately—and the Queen was somehow different.

  But Ser Gabriel merely bowed. “Can I help you with a hale winter apple, some sausage and a nice hard cheese?” he asked.

  Blanche busied herself with the water. She served the Queen two cups and put a third at her elbow. Then she put the rest on to heat in a big, often-patched copper cauldron that seemed to have more rivets than a porcupine had quills. It held water well enough, though.

  She stirred her first laundry load and skimmed the foulest crud off the top.

  Ser Gabriel came back with food. At the first scent of the sausage, Blanche realized that she, too, was famished.

  He knelt by the Queen and fed her.

  While she was chewing, he asked, “Can you ride tomorrow, your grace?”

  Blanche put a hand to her throat, but the Queen managed a chuckle.

  “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” she asked. “De Vrailly won’t give me a day to rest.”

  Ser Gabriel was cutting sausage with his eating knife. “I fancy it is the archbishop at the root of this, and not poor de Vrailly.”

  “Poor de Vrailly?” Desiderata asked, and the open malice in her voice was the Queen that Blanche knew. Human. And angry.

  “He’s a pawn,” Ser Gabriel said. “We are all pawns.”

  “Now you sound like de Rohan,” she said. “Yes, I can ride tomorrow. Or right now, if you let me have more cheese first. Promise me you’ll feed Blanche, too. She’s done nothing but ride and work all day.”

  Ser Gabriel nodded. He put the last piece of cheese in her mouth as if she was an infant. “I can give you about eight more hours,” he said. “Unless the news is bad.”

  “Worse than the death of your mother?” Desiderata asked. “I’m sorry, that was pert.”